Team Tensai
by Wingwyrm
Summary: They've gone back to the past. They've gone too far back into the past and they just don't want to wait around years and years, so they figured they might as well start early. Team 7, gen, time travel. Angst/Drama/Humor.
1. Team Tensai

**Title: **Team Tensai

**Rating: **T

**Summary: **They've gone back to the past. They've gone too far back into the past and they just don't want to wait around years and years, so they figured they might as well start early.

**Warnings: **none, gen, no beta

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does.

**Author Note: **I love time travel fics. I really do. This was on the top of my head and I had to write it down, so I thought I might as well share it with you. Originally a one-shot, it has evolved into a WIP with a side-story/prequel called Mangekyō Sharingan.

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His first genin team. Or, at least the first one that he was going to be testing to see if they would actually be genin. Sarutobi-sama had insisted that he start testing genin. The teacher at the Academy had told him that the students were already at training ground seven, so he made his way there, wondering exactly what kind of children he would be testing. It was simple enough for him to think up a test for the wanna-be team, it'd be the same test that his Jounin-sensei had given his team.

Hiding up in the trees surrounding the training area, he watched for the students. All he could see where three six year olds playing in the dirt. Actually playing in the dirt, with rocks and everything. He could clearly see that the child with black hair was an Uchiha, the red and white fan on the back of his shirt a dead give-away. The girl-child had amazingly fluffy pink hair and the last child was dressed in practically rags, his blond mop of hair fly-away and dirty.

There was no one else in the area.

Hopping down from the tree, nineteen year old Kakashi Hatake walked sedately towards them.

"Yo." They barely looked up at him before going back to their game. He was a little annoyed at being so easily dismissed, but figured that the children were spawn of ninja and wouldn't really be wary of someone with a Konoha headband and Jounin vest, "What are you kids doing here?"

"Waitin'." The Uchiha mumbled, pulling a rock from the blond's hands.

"Who are you waiting for?"

"Teacher." The pink fluff-ball frowned and gave the Uchiha a rock. The blond groaned and took a rock back from the Uchiha.

"'Ra..." His bottom lip wobbled and his voice was despondent; Kakashi grinned under his mask, "Why you so mean?"

"Sorry 'To," The pinkette grinned at the blond and the Uchiha smirked. Which was decidedly cute on his six year old face.

"So," Kakashi flopped onto the ground next to the Uchiha, watching the little game, becoming fascinated as the rocks exchanged hands quickly. There were a total of twenty-one rocks that the kids were passing between themselves and to Kakashi's surprise, he started to see a pattern, a strategy to what they were doing, "What's the name of the game?"

The blond scoffed and looked at him. Kakashi hid his shock as seeing the six whisker marks on his face. This was the boy with the Nine Tails sealed in him. "Pass the Rock."

Incredulous, Kakashi bit his lip to contain his laughter, "'Pass the Rock'?"

"Is not a game." The Uchiha boy scowled fiercely when Pinkette took one of Blondie's rocks and Blondie took one of his. He paused for a moment then gave a rock to Pinkette who scowled back at him as she handed a rock to Blondie.

"How do you play?" Kakashi was intrigued. He'd never seen a game that involved rocks and passing them back and forth and even after watching for a bit he didn't understand what they were trying to accomplish or the rules they were using, but there was definitely strategy involved.

"'TO!!" Pinkette shrieked suddenly, throwing her hands into the air and flopping onto her back in a huff, "Do you always gotta win?"

"Is just good at it." Naruto, because it was most definitely Naruto Uzumaki who was the blond of the group, took all eight of Pinkette's rocks and held out his hand towards the Uchiha who was scowling as hard as possible for a six year old. The Uchiha growled in the back of his throat and handed over his four rocks.

"We'll play 'gain, right?" The Uchiha poked Naruto in the knee and Naruto nodded contentedly as he counted the rocks.

"Hey!" Naruto snapped his very blue eyes up at Kakashi, "You stealed one o' my rocks!"

Kakashi's visible eye snapped open and he stared at the blond kid, "I didn't."

"You did! 'pose ta have two-one!" Naruto horded the rocks close to his chest and stared at Kakashi with anger and hurt in his eyes, "Is only having two-zero!"

"The other kids may have not given you one of their rocks." Kakashi did indeed have the missing rock, but messing with easily manipulated children was always fun.

"'Ra an' 'Ke know the rules. They don't not gimme my rocks!"

To Kakashi's bemusement, both the Uchiha boy and Pinkette stood up, not that they were very much taller when they were standing, and glared at him, hands on hips. "Give 'To back the rock." The Uchiha hissed. It was surprising to see an Uchiha get so defensive for someone else.

"I don't have it," Kakashi raised his hands, indicating innocence. Or that his hands were weapon free, but that was more of a ninja thing. Besides, it was just a rock. The kids could grab another one, a much nicer one in his opinion, from the stream that was only ten meters away.

"Don' lie!" Pinkette literally screamed at Kakashi and he was so stunned at her shrill voice and absolute fury that he barely dodged out of the way when she leapt at him. He was distracted by the Uchiha flaring his chakra and substituted himself with a log just in time for a kunai with a live blade to slam into it.

Kakashi couldn't believe that the kid had live weapons. Who the hell gave a six year old live blades? Then again, the kid was an Uchiha.

Something hit Kakashi's knees and the teenager staggered forward a step, looking down to see Naruto holding tight to his legs, "Gimme my rock!"

Slipping out of the blond's grip, Kakashi sidestepped Pinkette, who had thrown herself at him again, only to have to her move into his dodge and sideswipe his hip, her short hair puffing up even more than it already was with what Kakashi assumed was anger.

"Fire: Phoenix Immortal!" From where the Uchiha was standing came several small balls of fire that Kakashi couldn't dodge completely though he managed to get his arms up to cover his face. He was completely flabbergasted that a _six_ year old, even an Uchiha six year old, managed to correctly do a C rank ninja technique. What was even better, or maybe worse, Kakashi couldn't decide, was that he'd done the technique with the shortest release phrase Kakashi had ever heard.

A sudden pain in his foot flooded over the burn pains on his arms made Kakashi look down to see that Pinkette had driven the kunai the Uchiha had originally thrown into his foot. And she hadn't just cut skin; she'd driven the blade to the hilt, right through his foot and into his sandal.

Pinkette growled at him and yanked the kunai back out of his foot and Kakashi hopped away only to trip backwards over Naruto, who'd been waiting behind him. The Uchiha leapt from his position, catching Kakashi around the neck on his way down, refusing to let go even with Kakashi pulling at his arms. Tiny hands scrabbled at Kakashi's pockets and then, within seconds, all three of the kids backed off.

Kakashi leaned up, resting on his elbow, stunned at the fierceness of the three over such a little thing as a rock of all things and glanced down to his foot to see that it was bleeding sluggishly. He turned his gaze back to the children when they started talking.

"Here 'To," Pinkette handed Naruto the rock that had at one point been in Kakashi's pocket and Naruto beamed at her. The Uchiha took the kunai that was offered back to him and cleaned it off with his shirt.

"You get them?" The Uchiha quirked an eyebrow at Naruto and the boy grinned, the whisker marks on his face crinkling.

"Absolutely." Naruto pulled something out of his pockets and handed one to each of the other children. They turned as one to Kakashi and presented a united front.

"I am Sasuke Uchiha." The Uchiha boy sketched a short bow and showed that he held a small silver bell in his hand.

"I am Naruto Uzumaki." Naruto saluted a textbook perfect salute to Kakashi.

"I am Sakura Haruno." Pinkette curtsied like a well trained court lady, also showing off a small silver bell in her hand.

Naruto stepped forward, standing the middle, Sasuke to his right, Sakura to his left, "We are your genin team. We graduated young and Sarutobi-sama decided that we should all be on the same team. For irony's sake, I believe that he gave our team to you."

With a snort, Sasuke rolled his eyes, "Team Tensai my lily-white ass."

"Oh shut it Sasuke," Sakura walked around Naruto and knelt at Kakashi's feet. "I have training as a medic Hatake-san; please allow me to heal your injuries." Without another word her hands glowed with a familiar green light and the pain from his burns on his arms dulled before going away completely. She hovered over his foot for a few seconds longer then leaned back, letting her hands fall gracefully into her lap, "There we go; as good as new."

"Wait," Kakashi sat up all the way, staring at the kids, "_You're_ the team that I'm supposed to be testing?" They were all of six for gods sake.

They _had_ managed to take him down though not for long and through surprise, but they'd still managed it. He knew that if the fight had gone on any longer he would have recovered fairly easy and taken control. It was how very childish the children had been acting before attacking him that had let them gain the element of surprise. Surprise was always an effective ninja tool.

"Yes, Sir," Naruto pulled Sakura behind him protectively at Kakashi's tone, probably worried about the jounin's temper at being tricked by young children; he was obviously ready to take anything on himself, including punishment, that Kakashi was prepared to throw at all of them for any reason he might have. The boy was used to punishment and it showed in his actions.

"And that thing, with the rocks," Kakashi couldn't help but chuckle, "That was to put me off guard so I wouldn't see you as anything but children. Young, untrained children just out in the sun, having fun." Kakashi shook his head, "Aa, even during the fight I thought it was only the rock that you wanted."

"Correct, Sir." Sasuke nudged Naruto in the back. "Okay, not all of it. Pass the Rock is actually a game that we've been playing for a while and the rocks that we use are important."

"How did you know what kind of test I'd be giving you?" Considering that Kakashi had never tested genin wanna-be before, he was curious as to how they knew what he'd use as his test.

"One of my cousins was on your team Hatake-san," The Uchiha boy spoke up, "When I found out that I would be tested by you I asked Obito's parents if they knew what kind of test you may give us. I was told your team was given a bell test that had been passed from the First Hokage all the way down to the Fourth. I was reasonably sure that you would give the same test." Sasuke nodded to Sakura, "Sakura was able to confirm that you had bells on you when you first sidestepped her lunge and signalled us. We then commenced with the rest of the plan."

Getting to his feet, Kakashi nodded, impressed with the children. Deeply impressed. He looked directly at Naruto, "So, you're good at gathering information, deception," He looked to Sakura, "medical techniques," He looked at Sasuke last, "ninjutsu and you obviously passed all the Academy tests. How did you decide who got the bells?"

"Genin are put in teams of three. Your test was set up to create dissention between the ranks and depended on teamwork," Naruto smiled, just a bit sadly, "I determined that if that was not the case, if any of us should be sent back to the Academy it should be me. I am, after all, me."

There wasn't anything Kakashi could say about that in front of the other two children, so he resolved to talk to Naruto about it later, when they were alone.

"Alright, alright," Kakashi grinned at the children and his visible eye curved up. The title that Sarutobi had given the team earlier was just too good to pass up, "You pass. Congratulations, Team Tensai."

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**tensai:**

_genius, prodigy, natural gift  
__natural calamity, disaster  
reprinting_


	2. Uchiha Clan

**Title: **Uchiha Clan

**Rating: **T

**Summary: **The Uchiha were glad when Sasuke broke every record they had. And then he got the Uzumaki boy on his team.

**Warnings: **Slight language

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does.

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"Mother," Sasuke called out as he entered the house, "I brought my genin team to be introduced to the family."

"Oh," Mikoto Uchiha exited the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, "Hello dears," She trailed of when she caught sight of the two other children with her son. "Um, are you all six?" She asked her son, a little confused. When Itachi had been put on a genin team both of his teammates had been twelve year olds.

"Nah," The blond boy scrubbed his hand through his messy hair, "I'm seven. I'm older than 'Ke by about," He paused and looked up at her for the first time, "-ten months."

He had whisker marks on his cheeks.

The container of the Nine-Tails.

Her precocious six year old son was on the same team as the Nine-Tails container. She wasn't even sure what to think about that.

When the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox had attacked Konoha and the Fourth Hokage had died, almost every single clan in Konoha had made sure that there was an heir born within a year. Those clans who had heirs for their families already had not wasted any time having another child, like the Inuzuka and the Uchiha clans. It was fresh on their minds that anyone, at any time, could die.

Why the child looked as young, or maybe even a little younger, than Sasuke was a mystery.

Mikoto didn't like mysteries. Neither did Itachi.

"Otouto."

"Aniki." It had only been a year ago that Sasuke had stopped calling Itachi 'Itachi-nii' and 'Nii-tama'. That had been when he'd asked to go to the Academy. That had been when Fugaku Uchiha realised that he had a second son that wasn't just a 'spare', but a brilliant child. Smarter even, than the Uchiha Genius.

Not only had Sasuke proven to be smarter than his, at the time, ten year old brother, which was a feat that most adults couldn't claim, Sasuke had proven to be even more Uchiha. It was clan pride that had kept that a secret until it had been unavoidable that others found out: Sasuke Uchiha had activated his Sharingan at the age of five. Even Itachi had been eight when he'd activated his Sharingan.

"Hello," The small girl with short pink hair stepped forward, "I'm Sakura Haruno and I'm six. I'm on Sasuke-kun's team and I specialize in Medical Ninjutsu and Genjutsu. I was offered a place in the Ninja Academy last year and graduated with Sasuke-kun and Naruto-kun. Kakashi-sensei passed our team this morning and I won't ever let Sasuke-kun die of anything but old age."

"Naruto Uzumaki," Uzumaki shrugged one shoulder, picking at the edge of his thin black tee-shirt that was about two sizes too large for him, "I'm a pariah and live in an apartment by myself. I specialize in Wind Ninjutsu and Sealing. Sarutobi-ojii-san enrolled me into the Academy last year after I asked him to let me go. Sasuke is my best friend."

Mikoto inwardly cursed her soft maternal heart as it broke just a little for the boy.

"I would like my teammates to stay for supper, Mother, if you don't mind their inclusion."

"You should ask your father." Mikoto wasn't going to be the one to get in shit from Fugaku for letting the Nine Tails Container eat at the Uchiha table.

"I will do it," Itachi turned to the front door, but Sasuke blocked him before he got there.

"They are my guests Aniki, let me take responsibility for them." Sasuke gave his older brother a tiny nod and vanished in a small burst of wind, using the chuunin skill Body Flicker to vanish from the entry way.

"That rat bastard," Uzumaki growled under his breath and Mikoto rounded on him, ready to give the urchin a fairly large piece of her mind for insulting her son only for him to continue before she could, "It's been over a year. You'd think that he'd'a gotten used to it by now."

The Haruno child shook her head and patted Uzumaki's shoulder in something that resembled empathy, "You've never got over it either. If he were still around, do you really think that even after a year of exposure you'd been able to 'get over it'?"

"Yeah, 'kay, you're right. Sorry 'Ra-chan," Uzumaki sighed, "I'm jus' glad that he's dead and I won' ever meet him 'gain. I guess 'Ke's not doin' too bad."

Mikoto stared at the boy. She'd never heard an accent like the one that he had just displayed and yet not minutes earlier he had spoken like a clan member with clean grammar and enunciation. "Are you from a ninja family as well, Sakura-chan?" Mikoto asked as she ushered the two children past her eldest son and into the living room. Sakura sat daintily on the couch and Uzumaki fell into a sprawl on the floor. Itachi hovered at the edge of the room.

"No Uchiha-san," Sakura ducked her head, "My parents are civilians. My father works at a machining shop and Mother is a librarian."

Before Mikoto had time to ask the girl another question, not wanting to hear about the Nine Tails container, Uzumaki spoke up, "Ain't got a mom or dad. Iruka-sensei likes me though." He smiled and Mikoto's living room seemed to be a bit brighter than before.

"That's nice, Naruto," She almost stumbled over his name. It would be unfailingly rude for her to address Sakura by her first name and not the Uzumaki. Uchiha's were never rude.

"Yeah, Iruka'll buy me food. He goes out an' gets groceries for me. And he buys me ramen!" Uzumaki's eyes brightened considerably and Mikoto had to look away at the pure joy for something so simple.

"Doesn't he also let you crash at his place when the villagers trash your apartment?" Sakura asked, "That's where you went last Thursday, right?"

"Yeah, 'Ka-sensei set up a extra futon for me in his room. He's real cool," Uzumaki rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling, "He let me use the washin' machine too."

"You don't usually have access to a washing machine Naruto-kun?" If Itachi's facial muscles had been given regular exercise over the course of his so-far short life, he would have frowned. Even in an apartment building there were washing facilities that would accept clothes from anyone with money.

"Nah," Uzumaki shook his head, "Las' time I got my clothes washed, they all came back with holes and shit. I use the sink in the kitchen now."

Mikoto worried her bottom lip, "Naruto, how often does your apartment get ransacked?" It was understandable that no one like the boy the Nine Tailed Fox was sealed in, but to actually attack him or destroy his possessions was a little out of control for most ninja.

"'Bout twice a year," Uzumaki shrugged, not even looking at her, "I put up traps an' stuff, but I can't use ninja 'niques because it's the civies that are trashin' my place, not ninja."

There was a flicker of chakra and Sasuke appeared in the entrance, "Father said yes."

That was both a surprise and not. Fugaku was just as aware, more-so even, than Mikoto of clan reputation and it was far worse for a clan member to allow one person to stay for dinner and refuse the other, even if it was Uzumaki, then to refuse a request from a new genin to have his team mates for supper. Konoha was all about the teamwork.

"Is there anything special that you'd like for dinner Sasuke-kun?" Mikoto asked her son, wondering absently why Sasuke was so insistent, and it was insistence that he was showing by going so far as to ask for Konoha's pariah to dine with the family, about having Uzumaki at the house.

It was possible that the Hatake was the reason. Hatake was well known to the Uchiha clan and despised for it. As the only non-Uchiha to have the Sharingan transplanted into him, as the only non-clan member to have a dōjutsu transplanted, it silently proved to the clan council that the Hyuga were correct in utilizing the Caged Bird Seal.

The Uchiha were not about to be forcing their members into servitude though. They had far too much of that from Konoha proper. To further cage most of the Uchiha would be detrimental to the clan and to the village.

Living in the Uchiha compound was not the wish of all the Uchiha after all. It was an unspoken rule that users of a dōjutsu were confined to one place to make the other people of the village feel safer, less vulnerable.

"He would like something with tomatoes," Uzumaki's inflection and accent were once again perfect, "Sakura-chan prefers to eat salads, but we are working on that. Children as young as we are should not be restraining ourselves from food," Uzumaki eyeballed the kunoichi in a serious manner. Sakura blushed and looked down to her hands in her lap.

"What do you like Naruto?" Itachi spoke up from his corner and Uzumaki shrugged, completely nonchalant.

"I don't have a preference."

"Because you don't eat well Naruto," Sasuke gripped the boy's shoulder tightly. Uzumaki glanced up at the younger boy and smiled, "Naruto will have mostly vegetables with well-done yakitori. He needs the vitamins and minerals."

"Alright," Naruto sighed, "Do I really have to eat the meat 'Ke? Really?"

Sasuke was practically hissing out his words, his anger like a knife to the throat, "The meat that our family obtains from the markets is not rotten or spoiled Naruto, it will taste good and will be good for you."

"Hey!" Naruto scowled, "It's not like I go out and purposely find the most spoiled cut to buy."

Sakura joined the boys on the floor, her large green eyes sad, "We know, 'To. We know."

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	3. Umino Foundation

**Title: **Umino Foundation

**Rating: **M

**Summary: **Iruka is only nine years older than Naruto. Why Naruto picked him to be his 'precious person' is still a mystery to the teenager. Also, where the hell did Naruto see zombies?

**Warnings: **Strong language, light violence, references to slash

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does.

**Author Note: **I am interested in slash. This does not mean that everyone and their dog is going to by gay in my stories. In my 'verse, ninja know that life is short, sometimes painfully so, and that means that they take comfort with whichever sex they feel like, man or woman. This does not mean that Iruka is gay. It means that Iruka liked Mizuki at one point. He may be with a woman next time. IDK, it's all very fluid. I just needed someone that Naruto had a reason to hate. :)

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Iruka Umino was a nice person. Even though he was a sixteen year old chuunin who'd only just started teaching at the academy a year earlier, he was trusted with pretty much everything to do with the students. He also drew children to him like the Pied Piper did, only without the need of music.

The first time that he met Naruto Uzumaki a year ago, the six year old boy was lounging on the steps of the school with two children his age. Iruka quickly found out that the trio of genius' were good friends. Uchiha's never went to bat for anyone other than family, but the Uchiha boy in Naruto's little group beat the ever living crap out of an eleven year old early genin graduate that afternoon for throwing mud at the Container.

Not that the mud had actually hit Naruto; no, the boy was far too fast for that.

"Iruka-sensei?" Even though the blond had graduated with his two friends just a week earlier, Naruto still came around the school at the end of the day to walk Iruka home, like he needed protecting.

"Ahh, Naruto-kun. How was your day?" As nice as Iruka was, he was even smarter. He'd heard the wishes of the Fourth Hokage, he'd heard the explanation of the sealing; he knew that Naruto was the one keeping Konoha safe, not a reborn Nine Tailed Demon Fox in human form.

"Was good!" Naruto exclaimed as he clasped their hands together. Iruka slung his satchel over his shoulder and off they went toward Iruka's house. "Kaka-sensei was pretty surprised to see Sasuke and me sparrin' on the water, and Sakura was balancin' a leaf o'er her nose, standin' off ta the side of the water so she didn't get hit with nothing. He said we was doing good."

"That's excellent, Naruto-kun," Iruka squeezed Naruto's hand gently and Naruto squeezed back, "And I heard that you had dinner with Sasuke-kun's family last week. How did that go?"

"Oh man!" Naruto practically jumped three feet in the air he was so excited, "Man oh man! Mikoto-sama made this yakiniku, I think it was pork, it was so good! I've ne'er had such good food before!" He stopped jumping and looked up at Iruka through his eyelashes, continuing in a more guarded tone, "I mean, you always feed me good an' I love eatin' at your place, but Mikoto-sama is really awesome."

Iruka laughed gaily, just a little intimidated and a lot sad that Naruto thought his cooking was good. He made a mean instant ramen, sure, but he was better at cooking over an open fire than with a stove. Naruto's preference just highlighted how bad his life really was. Naruto may have meant to be comforting with his words, but the reality was there in the background every time he opened his mouth.

"It's okay, Naruto," Iruka pulled Naruto into a quick, tight hug and ruffled his hair before taking the boy's hand again and continuing their journey, "Did you have fun?" Iruka asked a moment later.

"Well," Still a bit subdued, Naruto shrugged one shoulder, "Sasuke and Sakura were there, which was awesome, and Mikoto-sama is totally cool and 'Tachi-san is kinda... 'Ka-sensei?"

"Yes Naruto?"

Naruto looked up at Iruka with wide eyes and a completely serious expression on his face, "When zombies get resurrected, they don't got emotions, right? 'Cause I heard zombies had no emotions, and 'Tachi-san is kinda emotionless, so I was wonderin'... Is 'Tachi-san a zombie?"

The complete seriousness that Naruto's face held was far too much for Iruka and the teenager broke down laughing so hard he fell to his knees, satchel landing beside him, a worried Naruto in his face.

"'Ka-sensei? You okay? What's so funny?" The panic in Naruto's face convinced Iruka that it would be bad for the child to see his 'beloved 'Ka-sensei' keel over from laughter.

"No, Naruto, I'm fine, it's okay," Iruka breathed deeply to contain his mirth, "I was just... I found something you said funny, that's all."

"What's so funny 'bout 'Tachi-san bein' a zombie?" Naruto stood back and crossed his arms over his chest defiantly, "I've seen zombies 'fore! I saw some guy using bodies for puppets and that means I saw zombies! 'Tachi-san could totally be a zombie."

Iruka rested a hand on Naruto's shoulder with a smile, "If Itachi-san really was a-" Iruka had a hard time getting the words out without bursting into laughter again, "-a zombie-puppet, who is controlling him then?"

There was a pause as Naruto thought about the question. "Uchiha-sama!" Naruto exclaimed suddenly with vigour, "Uchiha-sama was really, really cold! Colder than zombie-'Tachi-san and he don't like me! Everythin' Uchiha-zombie-controller-sama tol' zombie-'Tachi-san to do, zombie-'Tachi-san did!"

Wide eyed, Iruka gripped Naruto by the shoulders hard, shaking him once, gently, "Naruto, don't ever call Uchiha-sama 'Uchiha-zombie-controller-sama' to his face. In fact, don't ever call him that. Uchiha-sama is not a 'zombie-controller' and Itachi-san is not a zombie, okay?"

"Err, alright," Naruto furrowed his brow then shrugged, "Can I call 'Tachi-san..."

"No! I mean," Iruka lowered his voice at Naruto flinch, "No, Naruto, you can't call Itachi-san 'zombie-Itachi-san'. It isn't polite. Calling people by mean names hurts their feelings."

Blue eyes clouded over and Naruto nodded distantly, "Yeah, okay. I won't call anyone a mean name. Sorry Iruka-sensei."

Shocked by his full name, Iruka pulled Naruto back into a tight hug, this one not short, "Oh Kiddo, you can call me 'Ka-sensei. It's not a mean name. It's a nickname, like the ones you have for your team. I like having you call me 'Ka-sensei. It means that you like me."

Naruto sniffled in Iruka's ear and nodded, burying his face in Iruka's neck. He mumbled something and Iruka hummed at him in question. Pulling away, just a tiny bit, Naruto mumbled again, "Love you 'Ka-sensei."

Iruka felt his heart melt all over again, "Love you too, Naruto."

Naruto breathed into his neck for a few moments then leapt back with a huge grin, "What'cha doing tonight 'Ka-sensei?"

Getting to his feet, a similar smile on his own face, Iruka shouldered his satchel once more, "Well, I have some remedial marking to do for the summer students..."

"Nononono, you gotta play with me and you oughtta teach me something cool!" Naruto grabbed the keys that Iruka threw him and opened the front door, "You could be jounin yah know! I saw this jounin out in the trainin' field just next to us today, and you coulda beat his ass if you'd'a wanted to!"

"Language," Iruka bit out sharply, watching Naruto tear through his living room. Sometimes Iruka wondered why he'd never asked Naruto if he wanted to live with him, the poor boy was living in an apartment all alone. Arms came up around Iruka's shoulders, Naruto shut up mid-word and Iruka remembered with a jolt that he'd never asked Naruto to come live with him because Naruto hated Mizuki.

"Hello, Iruka." Mizuki murmured and Iruka blushed.

"Mizuki, Naruto's here."

"Yeah," Mizuki's voice became a little strained, "I heard."

"Naruto, why don't you clean up in the bathroom and I'll put some water on for ramen."

"Yay!" Naruto streaked out of the room like he was on fire.

Removing himself from Mizuki's restraining hold, Iruka frowned at his lover, "Mizuki, there are no PDA's when Naruto is here. I've told you before."

"Sorry, Iruka. I just; every time I see you , I can't help myself. You're just so beautiful." Mizuki ran a hand through his thin, shoulder length silver hair, angry with how he wasn't allowed to kiss his boyfriend when the younger teen invited the demon brat over.

Drawing himself up, Iruka hardened his eyes, "I am not a play toy. This is my house and if you don't respect the rules, you can leave. You aren't paying rent."

Mizuki looked shocked, "Iruka. Love. I'm your partner."

"Damn it, Mizuki," Iruka took a deep breath, "You don't pay for food, you don't pay for meals when we go out, you don't keep your promises, you pick up other girls and guys at the bar... I have just about had it with you. Do you understand me?"

"Iruka," Mizuki leaned in close to Iruka, pressing their cheeks together, "You don't make the rules." A hand sneaked up and lightly caressed Iruka's throat, warning evident in how tight Mizuki held him.

Before Iruka could do anything more than blink at the impetuousness of the silver headed assistant teacher, Mizuki's hand was ripped from his throat and with a cry, Mizuki landed hard on his knees. Iruka looked down to see Naruto standing on a kunai that was buried in Mizuki's upper calf.

"Touch 'Ka-chan again and I will fucking kill you. Understood?" Naruto's high pitched, childish voice would have normally sounded funny, but with Mizuki on the floor bleeding and another kunai to the nineteen year old's jugular, it wasn't.

It wasn't funny at all.

"Naruto," Iruka breathed out in shock. He'd never seen Naruto like this before. Never knew that Naruto saw him as a parent figure. Was a little surprised that Naruto saw him as his _mother_.

"Iruka-kaa-chan is my very first and most precious person. If you threaten Iruka-kaa-chan, you threaten my family. If you threaten my family I will hunt you down and I will tear you limb from limb." Naruto was growling now and Iruka went to step forward. Naruto glanced up at him and Iruka stopped. There was something in Naruto's eyes that screamed at him. Screamed 'pain' at him.

"You..." Mizuki sneered.

Digging the blade of the kunai into Mizuki's throat just enough to draw blood, Naruto jerked Mizuki's head back by his hair, "You wouldn't be my first kill. Not by a long shot, you motherfucking cocksucker. I am a genius genin. I am an orphan who lives in the bad part of town. I haven't been innocent for more than half of my very short life. Blood has run through my fingers and over my hands for so long that I can't remember the last time they were clean. Don't. Fuck. With. Me." Naruto shook Mizuki's head once more and let him go, pushing him forward with a burst of chakra, forcing the oldest ninja in the room to catch himself on the floor with his forearms.

"Naruto," Iruka went to Naruto and gathered the boy into his arms, "Oh, Naruto." There was so much pain in Naruto's words that Iruka couldn't help but feel horrified for his pseudo-son.

"Leave." Naruto glared at Mizuki, pointing the kunai at the door. The light from the entrance way glinted off the drop of blood that hung on to the tip of the blade.

Mizuki glared back, before flinching at the Killing Intent that both Naruto and Iruka levelled at him and scrambled out the door.

"He won't be back, Naruto."

"He better not be," Naruto grimaced and wiped the blade on his shorts, "Stupid idiot thought he could force 'Ka-sensei into anything. Bastard. If I hadn't'a got him, you'd'a killed the fucker..."

"Naruto," Iruka watched Naruto put the kunai away, "Did you mean it?"

"Mean what?" Naruto cocked his head sideways, blinking.

"You said," Iruka cleared his throat, "You said that I was your very first and most precious person. That I was your 'Ka-chan'."

Cheeks flushed suddenly and Naruto looked away and down at the floor. He mumbled an affirmative under his breath.

Iruka put a finger under Naruto's chin and made him look back up, "Would you like to move into the spare bedroom?"

"What?" Naruto flinched, startled by Iruka's sudden offer.

"I'd like it if my son is living with me, like children should live with their parents."

"But I'm not... You're not," Naruto floundered for words.

Iruka couldn't help but smile, "I love you, Naruto. If you consider me your parent, I consider you my son," Iruka gave just a bit of a pout, "Though I'd rather prefer to be your father than your mother."

Naruto smiled back.

*****xxXXxx*****


	4. Team Henohenomoheji

**Title: **Team Henohenomoheji. I mean, Team Tensai

**Rating: **T

**Summary: **Naruto is mocking him, Kakashi just knows it. But there are more important things to worry about and therapy is only one of them.

**Warnings: **Allusions to rape, serious discussion, gen, no beta

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does.

**Author Note:** I started this and it was supposed to be a funny little drabble, and then I was photoshopping and photoshopped six/eight year old Sasuke with Mangekyō Sharingan and it devolved from there. Sorry guys! :) Also, this is a different interpretation of being able to achieve Mangekyō. And oh my god, I just realised that this is the third part of Team Tensai that I've written where it starts out all light and fluffy and devolves into sadness and pain. *eg* I think I might have a working formula *muwhahahaha*

*****xxXXxx*****

Hiruzen Sarutobi looked over the three children standing in his office, heads held high and grins on their faces. Kakashi Hatake stood between Sarutobi and the children and the Hokage shook his head.

"Kakashi. Your genin are not dogs."

"I know." Kakashi didn't even have the decency to blush or look away.

"You can't treat them the same way as you treat your ninken."

"I know."

You don't own them."

"Yes Sir."

"Can you tell me why, exactly, your three genin have a henohenomoheji on their shirts?"

"No Sir."

"Naruto-kun? Did Kakashi-sensei put the henohenomoheji on your shirt?" Sarutobi looked around Kakashi at the smallest of the three.

"Nope!" Naruto Uzumaki thumped his chest, "'Ke had his uchiwa on his shirt and I wanna belong somewhere and Pakkun and Buru have a henohenomoheji on 'em and so I drew one on my shirt! I'm Kaka-sensei's genin! Just like his ninken!"

"Naruto, you don't need to brand yourself to belong somewhere..." Sarutobi trailed off. "If you started it, why do Sakura-chan and Sasuke-kun also have henohenomoheji's?"

Naruto looked down at the ground, "I, um. I was lonely. 'Ra and 'Ke didn't want me to be alone, so they put faces on their shirts too."

"I see." Sarutobi didn't really see. Why the hell would an Uchiha replace his uchiwa with a henohenomoheji on the whim of a teammate? It wasn't natural. It had never been done before. "And you're sure that Kakashi-sensei had nothing to do with this?"

"You got it old man!" Naruto pumped his fist into the air exuberantly, "It was all me!"

At least the boy was as energetic as he ever was. "Alright. Why don't you show Sakura-chan and Sasuke-kun around to your office? I would like to have a talk with your sensei."

"Old man," Naruto sounded reproving, "I ain't dumb. You're gonna raze 'im for putting his mark on his genin. He didn't do it. I did it."

"Being a prankster still?" Sarutobi shook his head at the eldest of the genin and waved them outside, "Go on now, Naruto. I still need to talk to Kakashi-sensei."

The kids scowled, but trooped out of the office. Sarutobi looked back to his finest ANBU. How the teenager managed to be jounin, genin sensei, and ANBU operative all at the same time astounded Sarutobi. The Hokage had thought that the Hatake would have quit his ANBU position at the very least, but he hadn't.

"Now, Kakashi."

"Hokage-sama," Kakashi held up a hand, "I know when the kids are mocking me, and I know when Naruto-chan's been completely honest. This whole business about the henohenomoheji is a bit of both. Naruto-chan is interested in belonging and does consider everything with a scarecrow face emblem on it to be mine. But he's also jerking our chain, because just last week he got Sakura-chan and Sasuke-chan to slant their hitai-ite's over their left eye for three days."

Sarutobi coughed into his hand to cover his chuckle. He could just imagine the three children walking around with their hitai-ite's askew like their sensei. It would be so cute. "You got pictures I assume?"

There was a twinkle in Kakashi's eye, "Of course I did Hokage-sama," He pulled out a small package and tossed it lightly on the desk, "I got copies for you, Itachi and myself. I don't think Sakura-chan's parents would understand the joke."

"No, no they wouldn't," Not as civilians they wouldn't. Sarutobi pulled the photographs from the envelope and couldn't hide his smile at the cuteness in the pictures.

He was almost through all the pictures when a single one of Sasuke came up. He paused and stared at the photograph with wide eyes.

"Is that the one," Kakashi leaned over the desk to glimpse at the picture and nodded to himself, "Yeah. So I found out two weeks ago that Sasuke's Sharingan is active. Not only the Sharingan, but the Mangekyō Sharingan."

Seeing a six year old with bright red and black swirled eyes was a shock. Knowing that the boy had Mangekyō meant that Sasuke had killed someone close to him. It was the only way.

"What did he say about it?"

Kakashi shook his head, "I didn't ask. I know that everyone thinks that a Uchiha has to kill someone that they're close to for the Mangekyō to activate, but it's not quite that simple." Kakashi closed his eye and turned his head downwards, "You don't kill someone you're close to emotionally; you kill someone who has been in physical contact with you using their reproductive organs. That means that Sasuke either killed his mother for giving birth to him, and Mikoto-san is still alive, or he killed someone he had sex with."

Sarutobi saw red. "He's six!"

"Yes." Kakashi looked up, "And his father is the head of the Konoha Police Force. I asked Fugaku-san about Sasuke's Sharingan. He said that there were no arrests. But there was a body that turned up in a hotel room a few days after Sasuke come home one evening crying." There was a feral air to Kakashi as his Killing Intent leaked out, "Fugaku found out about the Mangekyō and the investigation into the man's death was determined to be self defence in civilian court."

Breathing deeply to control his anger, Sarutobi put the photo with the others, back in the envelope. "I assume that you scheduled counselling for Sasuke-kun."

"Already taken care of; Fugaku and Mikoto are taking him every Saturday to the Uchiha counsellor. There are about two other Uchiha with the Mangekyō, I believe that they were mission related, but even the Uchiha know that the trauma of rape has to be dealt with."

"Anything else to report Kakashi?"

Kakashi paused before nodding, "I believe that Sasuke told Naruto what happened." He paused again, "Naruto is usually a very enthusiastic young boy, but there are times where he and Sasuke spend hours alone, talking quietly by the Memorial Stone. I overheard some of the conversations that they've been having and I think Naruto understands _exactly_ what Sasuke is going through and it makes me want... They're just children for god's sake!"

"Have you found out who assaulted Naruto?" Killing Intent was pouring from Sarutobi and Kakashi was thankful that he was as trained as he was, or he'd be on his knees, begging for the fear to end.

"No. I have Neko and Karasu looking into it." If Kakashi was the one investigating, he knew that he wouldn't be able to help himself from killing anyone that even looked at Naruto wrong. That was a lot of people, and it only took one for Naruto to be able to sympathize with Sasuke. Neither of the ANBU have told him that they've found anything though.

"What of Sakura?" Sarutobi wasn't sure what he would do if he found out that all three of the young graduates had been sexually assaulted. He wasn't sure that he could take it.

Kakashi smiled, his visible eye clearing, "She's fine. Good parents, no real issues. She has a bit of an extreme personality, but we're working on that."

"Thank the gods." Sarutobi rested his hands flat on his desk, "About Naruto, has he confided in you? Or only Sasuke?"

"He hasn't said anything about his life to me. If I didn't know how he was treated by watching him while in ANBU I wouldn't think him any different than Sakura."

"Do you think that Sasuke could get Naruto to go with him on Saturdays? To the counsellor?"

"I would have to ask Fugaku. The Uchiha don't let non-Uchiha talk to their therapists." Kakashi shrugged his shoulders, "I'd have to tell Fugaku, Sasuke, and Naruto that I know what happened to the boys and then get Naruto to agree to go to counselling. Then get Fugaku to allow the jinchuuriki to use the Uchiha therapist."

"You have to let him know that you know anyway. Ask him if he'd be willing to go with Sasuke. If he says no, take him to the Yamanaka's. They have training in psychology."

One grey eye widened, "For interrogation, not counselling!" He blurted out then calmed himself, "Sorry Sir, I was surprised."

"Naruto has to see a counsellor about this. I don't want him ending up hating the majority of Konoha because of childhood trauma," Sarutobi pinned Kakashi with a hard look, "Ask Naruto and Sasuke if you could tell Sakura about it. If the whole team knows it'll be easier for all four of you."

"Yes Sir." Kakashi bowed. "Is there anything else, Sir?"

"No, you're dismissed."

"Sir." Kakashi bowed again and left the Hokage's office in search of his genin.

He found them gathered around Naruto's desk in the room that had been set aside for the boy some time ago a level under Sarutobi's office looking at some papers intently. He didn't go into the room, staying outside to eavesdrop on their conversation.

"So, given what information you got from Haku, Momochi should have fled from Kirigakure by now with him, right?" Sasuke muttered to Naruto and the blond boy nodded.

"Yeah, Haku's dad gathered some villagers and killed his mom and then Haku killed them and his dad and Momochi found him a few years later on the streets. Haku is... erm, I think he's about eight, probably nine now. He's only a few years older than me and three years older then you guys. I don't think Momochi adopted him though, just picked him up to make him into a weapon because of his bloodline."

Sakura scoffed, "One miserable ninja from Kiri doesn't mind bloodline limits and it just so happens to be Zabuza Momochi. What fucking irony." Sasuke chuckled with her and Naruto shushed them.

"Hush up guys, we're still in the Tower. So, if we know that Momochi has gone missing-nin, it stands to reason that he's hard pressed to train Haku and fend off Kiri's hunters at the same time, right?"

"Right," Sasuke agreed.

"Then we have the advantage. We're better trained than Haku and Kakashi-sensei can beat Momochi with one hand tied behind his back right now. If we give them another six years, the outcome could be different. You remember that water prison that Momochi likes to use."

"Yeah," Sakura sighed, "A true silent assassin, that Momochi."

"Are we going to be able to convince Kakashi-sensei to take us out on a mission towards Kiri?" There was a frown in Sasuke's voice and Kakashi cocked his head to the side. This was not what he was expecting. He, himself, had only just heard that one of the seven swordsmen of Kiri had tried to kill his Kage and fled the village when the attempt failed. How did three kids under the age of ten know? And what the hell were they planning? Why would they want to go _towards_ an A rank missing-nin?

Sakura spoke up, "I don't think we will be able to. I mean, who the hell takes two six year olds and a seven year old near an area confirmed to be harbouring a missing-nin? Kakashi-sensei may be a little touched in the head, but he isn't stupid. Besides," She waved a hand negligently, "We all know his stance on team mates. He would die before letting us get killed."

"Which means there is no way of getting us up close and personal with Momochi right now," Naruto sounded despondent and Kakashi shook his head to clear his mind.

What wonderfully genius children he was teaching, knowing that he wouldn't ever take them near a missing-nin as dangerous as one of the seven swordsmen. The question remained though; what were they trying to do and what did it have to do with Zabuza Momochi and this 'Haku'?

Throwing open the door, Kakashi grinned at his students, "Hello there my cutest little students!"

"Oh god," Sakura buried her face in her hands, "Lee flashbacks."

Both the boy's patted her shoulders in commiseration and Kakashi added another name onto his list to check out. Damn these kids for making him so curious about some things that he'd had to cut down on his Memorial Stone visiting time.

"'s okay 'Ra-chan, we totally understand," Naruto smiled up at Kakashi, "Hello Kakashi-sensei."

"Naruto-chan. What've you got there?" Kakashi leaned over Sasuke's head to look at the papers. All that he could see was a map of the Elemental Countries.

Curious. Very curious.

Maybe it was a Genjutsu. Sakura was very good at those.

"Just looking at the borders around Fire Country," Naruto pushed the papers towards him and grinned that innocent little grin that Kakashi wouldn't trust was innocent in a million years, "Do you want to look?"

"No, no that's fine Naruto-chan. Are you guys ready to go get another mission?"

"Okay, seriously Kakashi-sensei," Sasuke spoke, disgusted, "If we take one more D-rank, I'm going on strike. I've never done this many chores before in my entire life."

"Oh god, you don't even know the worst of it," Naruto rolled his eyes, "Just wait until we're chuunin or even jounin and the desk ninja insist on D-ranks 'cause we're so small. It'll be so embarrassing."

"I get you," Sakura rolled her eyes in tandem with Sasuke, "I totally get you."

*****xxXXxx*****

Extra Note: Just so you don't freak out about 5 yo Sasuke getting sexxed up, Sasuke slept with (and then killed) Karin in the original timeline to get the Mangekyō (it didn't work by killing Orochimaru as he didn't _really_ kill Orochimaru). He wanted to be able to use Tsukuyomi in battle (because the Mangekyō came back in time with him), so he had to make something up. Naruto just went out one night, found and killed a rapist, and Sasuke is like, the best actor ever. And so everyone else assumed what happened.

**Also**: If you'd like to see Itachi's reaction to Sasuke the day he showed his Mangekyō, it's story id: 5686039.


	5. C Rank Please

**Title: **C Rank Please

**Rating: **M

**Summary: **It's boring doing chores all the time. Maybe if they impress Kakashi they'll graduate from D's to C's. That would be a little more interesting.

**Warnings: **Language, gen

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does.

**Author Note:** Longest chapter for Team Tensai yet :) Also, for my reviewer (^^): No, at this point Itachi doesn't have the Mangekyō because we're about two years to early for that. :) (Thank you, 'Annoying Proofreader' for pointing that out! Hopefully it doesn't seem strange anymore)

*****xxXXxx*****

"Are we going to be nominated for the chuunin exams?" Sasuke asked lightly as he poked Kakashi in the knee, annoyed that his teacher was sleeping. Again.

Sakura rolled her eyes, "Seriously, Sasuke-kun, Kaka-sensei isn't going to nominate us. He hasn't even given us a C rank yet. Besides, you should stop asking him, we've only been genin for a month."

"And we've completed twelve D rank missions. Our teamwork is exceptional. What's wrong with wanting to advance?" Sasuke griped. He was so tired of the boring chores that had been forced on him. He was also starting to regret going along with Naruto's plan to fake getting his Mangekyō. Therapy was not fun.

At least he wasn't going alone. The Uchiha snorted.

"So what happened to Mizuki-teme anyway, Naruto?" Sasuke asked as he turned to watch his Hokage painting on a scroll with chakra infused blood.

"Oh, well, I stabbed him. Threatened to kill him," Naruto shrugged delicately as to not disturb his sealing lines, "Well, threatened to tear him piece to piece actually. Iruka-sensei was impressed. He didn't even tell me off for calling Mizuki a motherfucking cocksucker."

Sakura stifled a giggle.

Kakashi opened his visible eye and stared at Naruto. He blinked, asking in an incredulous tone, "You stabbed a chuunin?"

"Oh yeah," Naruto drawled, not really paying attention, "Held a kunai up to his jugular too. If he hadn't of left when I told him to, I totally would have killed him. As it was I nicked his throat as a warning."

"Naruto, how did you get close enough to do that?" Kakashi asked bemusedly. He was aware that his students were geniuses, but even though he himself had been a six year old genin, it had been during a time of war and children were advanced much quicker than they should have been.

Without even a flicker of chakra Naruto vanished from sight only to reappear less than a second later sitting next to his sensei, kunai point digging lightly into his jounin vest, "Like that."

"Holy crap." Kakashi breathed quietly. "How good are you at the Body Flicker?"

"Good enough that you didn't see me coming," Naruto replied, smirking up at the jounin, "It's not like the Body Flicker is hard. I mean, I was playing Flicker with Shisui-san last Saturday after our appointment. He said that I was good, but all I really do is compress my chakra to a point where it seems to be the same as a normal gust of wind. No one thinks to be wary of a gust of wind." Naruto's eyes closed as his smirk intensified, "It helps that I'm Wind natured."

"Okay!" Kakashi leapt to his feet with his exclamation, "New plan today."

"What, no more sleeping?" Sasuke muttered to Sakura who chuckled quietly.

"You're going to show me how good you are at the three academy taught techniques."

"What; clone, replacement, and transformation?" Naruto clarified Kakashi's statement as he frowned, "That's it?"

"If you're good enough at the Body Flicker to impress _Shisui of the Body Flicker_, then I want to see what else you excel at." Kakashi waved them down from the trees and pointed at Sakura, "You first. Replacement."

"Um. Okay." Sakura immediately did five rapid replacements using her sensei, her teammates, one squirrel and a training log. "What now?" She asked, her tone informing her sensei how useless she thought the exercise to be.

"Clone."

"Regular or typed?"

Kakashi looked closely at Sakura, "All the ones you know." A second later there were ten Sakura's standing before him. "Great." Nine kunai flashed into Kakashi's hand and one by one the clones were destroyed. The first was water, followed by mud, blossom, honey, haze, shadow, rock, lightening and fire.

Kakashi paused and stared. There was only one of those clone types that he'd never seen before. "Fire?"

"Yes. I figured that we're in Fire Country and all the other countries have a type of clone, so I spent, oh, three months working out how to make a clone of fire. The best part about a fire clone is that if you physically attack it, you'll get set on fire." Sakura clapped her hands, exited that there was someone she could lecture who hadn't been there when she'd come up with the process, "I used the composition of 'Greek Fire' to make the clone, so everything that the fire touches will catch on fire and water won't put it out. I had to learn how to shield obviously, so the clone doesn't set fire to the grass when it walks around, but that was a fairly simple addition to make."

Kakashi stated, "Greek Fire." He'd heard of Greek Fire from the scientists, but he'd never come across it in a fight. It was ingenious. "That's very good Sakura. Very good." Then Kakashi realized something. "You didn't use hand signs."

"No; you're correct, I didn't. I think of using hand signs as giving advanced warning, so anything I know that doesn't require me to use hand signs will usually be the first to be played out of my arsenal." Sakura paused in her lecture and blushed, "Err... you wanted to see a transformation as well, right?"

"Please."

Without hesitation Sakura was suddenly a perfect copy of Kakashi. "Yo." Sakura-Kakashi pulled a small orange book from her-his weapons pouch and flipped it open.

Curious, Kakashi went to her side and leaned over her shoulder. "The book?"

"Part of the transformation," Sakura-Kakashi blushed and handed the book over to her sensei.

Flipping through the pages Kakashi was shocked to see that there was writing. Reading one of the pages he raised an eyebrow, "This really is Icha Icha Paradise."

"It's not, actually," Sakura dropped her transformation and gestured at the book, "A transformation is really just a genjutsu and genjutsu is one of my specialty areas. I transformed something relatively innocent into an orange coloured book and weaved a genjutsu around it so that whatever you find inside is what you expected to find."

"Ahh," Kakashi hummed his approval, "Letting the mind of your opponent work for you instead of for him."

"Correct."

"Excellent work Sakura-chan," Kakashi tossed the book back to Sakura, who caught a sealing scroll, and turned to Sasuke, "Your turn."

"If we impress you, are you going to let us do a C rank?" Sasuke crossed his arms belligerently.

"I don't know yet, Sasuke-chan. It's always a possibility," Kakashi's eye curved up as he smiled at his student and Sasuke scowled.

"Fine." Without anything else said, Sasuke created ten different types of clones, replaced himself with every one of them and transformed at the end of the string of replacements, becoming a small pebble that his shadow clone picked up and started tossing into the air.

Kakashi's grin spread wider, "Wonderful. You are very good at these techniques. What type of clones do you have?"

The shadow-Sasuke shrugged a shoulder and replied, "Crow, water, haze, clay, lightening, fire, leaf, wood, smoke, and shadow." As he said each type of clone, that particular clone dispersed. When he spoke his own type Sasuke-rock dropped his transformation and replaced the dispersal smoke from the shadow. He glowered at his teacher, "Is that enough?"

"Wonderful," Kakashi repeated gaily. He turned to Naruto, "And last but not least, Naruto?"

Naruto smirked. He couldn't help it. "I'm not so good with the academy level transformation, or the clone really. I can do the replacement," Naruto paused to replace himself with a single falling leaf ten meters away, "But it takes more concentration than I like."

"Okay, what clones do you know?" Kakashi inquired. He was impressed that Naruto had managed to replace himself with a moving object that was so small. He'd been impressed with the others work as well. It was hard not to be impressed when you had six year olds doing more than half a dozen different clone types at the drop of a hat.

"I can do fourteen versions of the clone."

Sasuke interrupted Naruto with a snort, "Eleven. You have four types of shadow clone and two clay types."

"Oi!" Naruto cried out, "I'd like to see you do a _blood_ shadow or _mass_ shadow clone!"

Kakashi cocked his head to the side, "Mass?" He inquired curiously.

"Yeah! The first time I did it, I made five hundred and twenty-five shadow clones!" Naruto jumped and punched his fist into the air, "Then I saw someone's clone explode!" Naruto emphasised his last word with cupped hands that flung outwards, signifying an explosion and widened his eyes, "So now I have shadow explosion!"

There was a nervous chuckle from the students' sensei, "Maa, I don't think we need anything to be exploding right now, Naruto. Can you list off the clones you do know?"

"Err," Naruto hesitated, blinking and looking up at the sky in thought, "Shadow, shadow explosion, multiple shadow, blood shadow, clay, clay explosion, mud, fire, leaf, water, grass, lightening, paper, ink, and sand."

"Oh really." Kakashi sounded a little faint and Naruto nodded. There were at least three clone types in that list that the jounin had never heard of, and two that he'd only just been introduced to.

"And of course," Naruto lowered his voice and licked his lips, disturbingly looking like he was about to try seducing someone, "My homemade version of the transformation." In the background two childish voices cried out in indignation. "Harem Technique!"

Thirty-four well endowed, naked women of varying facial and body structures appeared and piled onto of Kakashi with moans and groans as they undulated against the poor nineteen year old and each other.

Naruto sat back and giggled into his hand. Up until Sakura whapped him across the back of the head.

"You idiot!"

"No, seriously, Naruto," Sasuke bent down to stare the other boy in the face when Naruto had pulled himself off the ground, "He was actually going to do some training with us. And you went and fucked it up by getting him off."

"Sorry guys," Naruto hung his head in shame, "I just," Naruto sighed, "I just haven't used that in so long I couldn't help myself."

The three genin turned back to watch Kakashi drag himself out of the pile of women.

He looked more than a little ragged as he begged breathlessly, "Please, make it stop..."

Naruto have a tiny nod and the clones vanished in puffs of smoke.

Kakashi rolled onto his back and stared up at the sky, dazed and confused, "How. Who. What the hell was that?"

"That was my Harem Technique. An ingenious combination of the shadow clone and transformation techniques, if I do say so myself," Naruto buffed his fingers against his shirt, proud of his ability to take out any hot blooded man or woman.

"I'm restricting you from using that unless there is no other option available, do you understand me?" Kakashi instructed Naruto forcefully as he got to his feet. "That technique is dangerous."

"Yes Kakashi-sensei," Naruto simpered, bobbing his head up and down in and imitation of a nod. He was totally lying. No one was ever going to restrict him from using his Harem whenever he wanted to.

Kakashi staggered over to the tree that he'd been sleeping in earlier and dropped into a cross-legged position, "One question about your," It was almost painful for Kakashi to say the word, "Harem. Those noises that they were making, they sounded awfully real. How did you know how to make them sound like that?"

"Oh." Naruto mumbled something under his breath.

Kakashi leaned toward the blond, "What was that?"

"The orphanage that I was in when I was little," Naruto hedged, "I got thrown out when I was four, you know?" He didn't look up from the ground. As he continued speaking his words turned clipped and unfeeling, as though he was giving a mission report instead of expanding on his personal history, "Sometimes the whores would feel sorry for me if it was raining and let me spend the night in the closet or in the second bed of their hotel room. I heard a lot of stuff. Bara-chan had fairly tame johns, so she'd usually be the one to pick me up. If Bara-chan wasn't around, Toge-sama would pick me up, but he made me watch most of the time. It was one of his conditions."

There was silence and than two sets of arms came around him. Even before they'd come back Naruto had never told his teammates what his childhood had been like. However it was now, it had been worse the first time around and Sasuke and Sakura knew that.

Kakashi watched his students, his face serious. He'd at first thought that Naruto's Harem was great fun, no matter how dangerous it was for people who were unprepared, then the clones had started touching and caressing and moaning and Kakashi had realised that no seven year old thought up something as detailed as that; something like that had to been seen to be copied.

Clapping his hands together, Kakashi brought the attention of his genin back to him, "Well," He proclaimed, "You have impressed me. I don't see a reason we can't beg a C rank off of the Hokage."

Throwing himself at Kakashi, Naruto whooped loudly, catching his sensei around the waist in a hug, "Awesome, Kakashi-sensei!"

Sakura couldn't contain her enthusiasm either, hugging Sasuke tightly, "Whoo! C's! Finally!"

Sasuke let a genuine smile grace his face as he patted Sakura's back coolly, "It will be a pleasant change."

"Maa, I only said we'd get 'a' C mission. That doesn't mean that we're off D's altogether," Kakashi maintained, "Remember Kaka-sensei's Rule number 26?"

The three children sighed and nodded, chorusing out together, "'You can always do something that will better Konoha. D ranks are just as important as A ranks.'"

Sasuke rolled his eyes. Naruto glanced over to his friend and nodded at him. He knew exactly what the Uchiha was thinking and couldn't help but to explain to their sensei, who never had learned how to speak proper, silent, Uchiha.

"We're ninja. Assassins. Thieves. We don't do these things called 'honour' and 'glory'. The only reason Konoha starts new ninja off with D ranks is to appease the general civilian population that we are not turning children into killers before they reach the age of adulthood in civilian law." Kakashi stared at Naruto. Naruto held up a hand, telling him to wait for the blond to finish up, "At least, that's how the Uchiha see it. For myself, personally? I know that doing D ranks are good for getting teams to work together, and as ninja of Konoha we need the skills of teamwork; that's one of the reasons that we're the top ninja village in the Elemental Countries. We send out teams to do the job instead of just one or two ninja who don't know how to work with or even around each other. With our skills in teamwork, we may take a pay cut because the reward is split so many different ways, but the job gets done and everyone comes home. It's a better business practice in the long run, money wise; and it is a better use of human resources."

Kakashi tried very hard not to broadcast his marvel at Naruto's very grown up version of why exactly Konoha was set up as it was. The reasoning that the boy had given sounded like it had come out of the chuunin graduate class that was a requirement before advancing to jounin.

"Nicely put Naruto," Sakura agreed evenly, "I'd agree with both versions of your explanation intellectually, but lean towards your reasoning under the ninja village law. No matter how many civilians are in a hidden village, the ninja out match them exponentially. Even if Konoha was making children into killers, the civilians couldn't do anything because they only _think_ they have the power. We present a nice face to the civilians and pretend to be malleable, but we could kill them all in less than an hour."

"Not even that," Sasuke snorted, "Civilians are weak. They do have money," Sasuke allowed, "But if they weren't paying us for killing other people, we'd just steal the money from them. They don't know that they're our pawns."

"So! How about that C rank?" Kakashi gathered his genin together and started herding them towards the Hokage Tower. It was a painful reminder of himself as a child whenever his team started talking about killing. They were too young, far too young, and yet they had a better grasp of what they were doing than most chuunin. The number one reason why most chuunin never made it further up the chain of command was their inability to see every side of the issue, whatever issue was in front of them. If his kids could already see at least three sides to the issue of their profession they were well on their way to becoming chuunin.

As the children turned their conversation to something lighter, Kakashi wondered how the Hokage would feel about him nominating his team for the chuunin exam. It was going to be held in Sand this time and they did have a non-violence treaty with them.

*****xxXXxx*****


	6. Memorial Conversation

**Title: **Memorial Conversation

**Rating: **T

**Summary: **They've been nominated. Wasn't really a surprise, they're more ready now than they were the first time. But this time the Chuunin Exams are being held in Suna. As the boys gets ready to leave Iruka and Itachi get to know each other just a little bit better. They do have a lot in common after all.

**Warnings:** gen

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does.

**Author Note:** Oh my! You guys! Thank you so much :) I just love opening my email up lately! All these lovely reviews and fav's and alerts... Thank you.

*****xxXXxx*****

"Why are we leaving a week earlier than everyone else? I mean, it's only going to take us a few days to get to Suna, I don't see why we can't leave with the other teams." Naruto complained to Iruka as he sealed away his clothes and toiletries for the trip to the chuunin exams.

Iruka ruffled Naruto's hair, "You guys are leaving early because you're younger."

"Ahh man," Naruto groaned, "We can run every other genin team into the ground and they want us to leave early because we might get tired and have to rest?"

"You're young Naruto, enjoy it," Iruka said happily, "Now, do you have time to eat before you leave, or are you going to be late?"

"I've only ever been late for one thing in my life 'Ka-chan," Naruto shook his head. The only thing Naruto had ever been late for was getting Sasuke back to Konoha. It had worked out in the end though.

"Alright, one last bowl of ramen at Ichiraku's and I'll see you off at the main gates, how does that sound?" Iruka asked, nudging the boy out the door.

Naruto nodded and they made their way to Ichiraku's.

Sasuke and Itachi were at the ramen stand when they arrived.

"Hey 'Ke, 'Tachi-san," Naruto greeted the solemn Uchiha brothers as he sat beside Sasuke, leaving the stool next to Itachi free for Iruka to take.

"Naruto." Sasuke pushed a steaming bowl of pasta to Naruto, "Are you all packed?"

"Yep," Naruto mumbled around his first bite of ramen.

Itachi watched Naruto eat with fascination. He'd seen the boy be completely polite at the genin introduction dinner held at the Uchiha house, so he knew that Naruto could eat like a civilized being, but watching the boy slurp down his food like a garbarator was seriously disturbing.

"You've never seen a starving street rat eat before have you, Itachi-san?" Iruka's question was voiced low enough that the elder Uchiha brother was the only one who heard it.

"No I haven't," Itachi turned to Iruka curiously.

Iruka shrugged a shoulder, "We learn to eat whatever we have fast so that no one will take it away from us."

Itachi raised an eyebrow, "'We'?"

"I may have a house that was left to me by my parents, but I've been an orphan for seven years. I know what it's like to go without. It's not something that I'll ever let happen to Naruto again."

"Aniki," Sasuke tugged the edge of Itachi's sleeve, "I'd like to go to the Memorial Stone before we leave."

"Hn."

"I wish to say goodbye to some people," Sasuke answered Itachi's unspoken question.

"Me too!" Naruto waved his flimsy wooden chopsticks around in the air, "I gotta say bye to 'Ka-chan's parents!" Naruto looked at Itachi, "Did you know that Izumi-baa-chan and Ikuta-jii-chan died fighting the Kyuubi?"

"I did not know that," Itachi shot a discreet look at Iruka to check his emotional response to his parent's death being practically shouted out to a stranger. To Itachi's surprise it didn't seem to bother the scarred ninja.

Iruka smiled modestly, "I told Naruto that I would introduce him to my parents before his first chuunin exam. I wasn't expecting it to be within five months of his graduation to genin."

"The joys of a child genius," Itachi spoke serenely.

Laughing, Iruka shook his head, "Oh if only I had been. No; you, Kakashi-sensei and the children are the genius'. I was smart, but nowhere near close to your guys' levels."

Naruto threw his arms around Iruka's waist with a large grin plastered on his face, "You lie 'Ka-chan, I sneaked your IQ scores from the Tower. Your mom was a Nara."

Rubbing the defining scar that crossed over his nose, Iruka flushed, "Alright Naruto, you're right. I did lie. I am very smart. I could take on any Nara alive right now and probably come out on top in terms of IQ, but I'm not a natural ninja like you five. I have to work very hard to keep my skills sharp. All five of you tensai could stop being ninja for months and come back to the plate fresh as daisy's and ready to kick anyone's ass."

Itachi looked down at the ground. For an eleven year old prodigy he was startlingly modest. Iruka liked that.

"Memorial Stone?" Naruto reminded the two older ninja and they stood.

Both reached for their pockets to pull out their wallets and Itachi gestured for Iruka to put his ratty leather purse away, "Allow me."

"Right," Iruka muttered. It wasn't like he was poor; he could pay for himself and Naruto without a problem. Iruka shook his head to clear it and firmly told himself that Itachi was only being kind, not condescending. "Thank you Itachi-san."

"You're welcome Umino-san." Itachi said by route.

"Oh, please, just Iruka is fine," Iruka corrected Itachi's use of his name, "I'm only five years older than you."

Itachi nodded his agreement and they were silent for the rest of the walk. Naruto wasn't silent and talk enough for all three other people that were in his group. Sasuke made remarks here and there in between Naruto's rapid speech that garnered a chuckle or two from Iruka.

Sasuke was the first to the Memorial Stone and he sunk to his knees in front of it. He traced over his cousins name as he whispered, "Hello Obito-ni-san. I'm going to Suna for my first chuunin exam. Kakashi-sensei is making us leave almost a week before everyone else leaves, but I think that's because he's being cautious."

Obito Uchiha was the only Uchiha other than Itachi that Sasuke had any real respect for. He had found out about the betrayal that the Uchiha had been driven to and though he didn't approve of how Itachi was told to handle it, he didn't blame his brother for following orders. Sasuke had come to realise that if his clan was still around when Naruto ascended to Hokage, he too would have wiped them all out to save Konoha from civil war. He trusted Naruto far more than he would trust any from the Uchiha clan and he could now see that Itachi trusted Sarutobi in the same way.

Obito was lucky to be dead when the coup d'état was planned. He would have been killed for being the Hokage's former student. His loyalty wouldn't have been trusted and Kakashi would have lost his friend either way.

Having learned about Obito from Kakashi, Sasuke was glad that his entire family wasn't made up of assholes and pompous bastards. Sometimes he thought that the Hyuga had nothing on the Uchiha pride, no wonder Itachi had been under so much pressure.

This time around would be different. This time Itachi wouldn't have to kill everyone. There wasn't as much pressure on the Uchiha either, what with a second Uchiha genius on the same team as the Sacrifice. If a Uchiha was content, even pleased, to be teamed with the Sacrifice, it showed two things. One, that the Uchiha were willing to play nice with anyone if need be, and two: the village trusted that the Uchiha were strong enough to survive, perhaps even win, if the Sacrifice succumbed to the monster inside.

Not that Sasuke cared what others thought. The only reason he was on Naruto's team was because they had planned it that way. Naruto was his Hokage and he was his Hokage's right hand.

Sasuke finished his conversation with Obito and moved out of the way so that Naruto and Iruka could knee at the stone. He'd kept his conversations with the future dead silent. He returned to his place at his brother's side and grabbed his hand, "Thank you," Sasuke hesitated then continued with forced nonchalance, "Nii-tama."

Itachi glanced quickly down at his little brother and a smile broke over his face as he squeezed Sasuke's hand, "You are welcome Otouto."

"Mother, Father," Iruka pulled Naruto close, "This is Naruto Uzumaki. I've, erm, I guess I've unofficially adopted him. I know that I'm young, but I had to grow up fast after you died. I'm a chuunin and just started my second year of teaching at the Academy. I think you would be proud of me."

"They are! Believe it!" Naruto hugged Iruka spontaneously. Iruka hugged him back. Turning to the Memorial Stone, Naruto became sombre, "Hi. I'm Naruto and I'm gonna call you Grandma and Grandpa. 'Ka-chan is really awesome. He's really strong and really smart, just like me." Naruto frowned, "I think he needs some help looking for a lover though. Mizuki was a right bastard," Naruto sneaked a look up at his guardian, "I wouldn't mind a girl this time. I know that 'Ka-chan don't really care about gender, but sometimes girls smell really nice and they're so soft too. I think 'Ka-chan needs someone soft. Mizuki-teme was too hard. I almost killed him. He was threatening my mom! No one threatens my mom and gets away with it."

"Naruto," Iruka shook his head with a rueful smile, "I thought we agreed that I would be your father, not your mother."

"Nah, we didn't 'gree to anything. You wanted to be my dad, but you're already my mom 'cause you make me clean behind my ears and do my homework and eat veggies. You even put me to bed at night and kiss my cheek. That's more of a mom thing. That's what 'Ke say's anyway." Naruto raised his voice at the end and grinned widely.

Sasuke scowled, "I don't care what he's saying Iruka-sensei, he is lying."

Iruka and Itachi both laughed and Iruka turned his attention back to the Stone, "Well, now you've met your grandson. I hope you approve."

Naruto clambered up Iruka to hug his neck tightly, "They do. Nothing you could do would make them not approve."

"Double negative Naruto-chan," Iruka reprimanded as he stood, Naruto in his arms. "Are we ready to go?" Iruka asked of Itachi.

The preteen nodded, "Yes. Sasuke has his belongings sealed in scrolls."

"Naruto as well," Iruka put Naruto down, "Okay then, race to the main gate. Rules: No ninjutsu, no genjutsu. Body only; you may augment with chakra. First one there gets a week of take-out when you guys get back from Suna. Annnnnd, GO!"

Sasuke was the first one out of sight, but Naruto wasn't much more than a millisecond behind him.

*****xxXXxx*****


	7. Suna Vacation

**Title: **Suna Vacation

**Rating: **M

**Summary: **So they're in Suna. They're in Suna to take the chuunin exam. And then one unstable Jinchuuriki meets the King Jinchuuriki. The Kazekage is not pleased by this. Not at all.

**Warnings:** Language, gen, AU (obviously)

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does.

**Author Note:** Wasn't really planning on something like this, but it got away from me, I had to rewrite the Summary like, four times _lol_ . Damn them muses :)

Also, thank you _terrorofthehighway_ for the con crit! I fixed the definitely/defiantly mistake you pointed out in chapter one. I'm trying not to treat my readers like they're stupid, so I'm letting them fill in the blanks, like the fact that the Uchiha are known for their ability to copy/steal everything, so they would most likely have very thorough records of everyone in their clan _and_ in the village (because they seem anal retentive like that), including Obito and Kakashi :) Besides, if you want something realistic, don't read fanfic, you're not going to get 'realistic' in fanfic.

*****xxXXxx*****

"So that was easy." Naruto cradled the back of his head with his folded hands as he and his team of tiny tensai walked out of the exam room where the written portion of the test had been held.

"No shit," Sasuke rolled his eyes, "There wasn't even any psychological torture involved. I could have done this test before."

"Hey," A fifteen year old Suna genin stepped in front of the three Konoha ninja and scowled down at them, "Kids aren't allowed in administration buildings unless they're escorted by chuunin."

Sasuke stared at the boy, glanced back to his team mates and then back at the boy. "Did you, or did you not, just see us take the written exam with you?" He asked condescendingly. The teenager frowned, "No, seriously. We're Konoha ninja," Sasuke flashed his hitai-ite at the teen, "Are you blind?"

"You're way too young..."

Before Sakura could make a scathing remark the hall went quiet as the Kazekage slammed the doors open and stood at the top of the stairs, looking down at all the hopeful genin.

Naruto hissed.

There was a tiny little red head standing a step behind and to the side of the Kazekage.

"Goddamn," Sasuke muttered, taking a step to his left to cover Naruto. He was always stepping in front of Naruto, it was his job.

"Damn it Sasuke; you..."

"I couldn't take on a twelve year old Jinchuuriki, but I can take on a six year old; I took on Kiraa Bii a few years later after all," Sasuke scowled as he saw Gaara of the Sand jerk his head up and stare at him intently, confusion in his solid turquoise irises. If Sasuke could get Gaara focused on himself rather than on Naruto...

Naruto stepped out from behind Sasuke and Gaara's intense eyes followed him.

"Something is different." Sakura frowned and stared at the boy. Her eyes widened and she covered her mouth with her hand, "Guys, he doesn't have his tattoo."

Gaara was indeed missing the blood red kanji tattoo on his forehead.

"Naruto?" Sasuke questioned his leader. He knew that the tattoo was important, but he had never been told the entire reason, nor had he asked for the information. It seemed like a personal detail and Sasuke didn't really care about the Godaime's personal details.

"It means that Gaara hasn't killed his uncle, Yashamaru yet. It means that Gaara doesn't know that it's his father that's trying to kill him." Naruto told his Captain under his breath.

"Father," Gaara's childish voice was low, but Naruto wasn't a Sacrifice for nothing, he heard the boy. "Father, there is someone down there."

The Kazekage looked down to his son and raised an eyebrow, not that anyone could see that behind his veil, "Yes Gaara, there are people down there."

"No Father, someone... Someone like me." Gaara was excited. He'd never known there were others like him. He'd thought himself alone and singular.

Killing Intent crashed down on every genin in the waiting area. Almost all of them fell to their knees in tears.

Team Tensai did not.

The Kazekage and Gaara stared at the only three people still standing. Gaara was smiling.

"Kill them."

The command from his father confused Gaara and the boy blinked, unsure. He questioned the command, "Father?"

"It's dangerous. Kill them."

"A-all of them?" Gaara frowned. There were a lot of people in the area. He'd never killed that many people at one time before.

"Just the three standing," The Kazekage pointed at Team Tensai.

Sasuke and Sakura stepped forward. Sakura bowed low, "Kazekage-sama, we are here only to complete the chuunin exam."

"And yet you bring a Jinchuuriki with you. That is not the action of someone only coming to another hidden village to do something as insignificant as the chuunin exam." The chuunin exam was not the only way for genin to be promoted up a rank. The Kazekage sneered, "Bringing a Jinchuuriki to another village is an act of war."

"Konoha has a non-violence treaty with Suna, Kazekage-sama." Sakura continued. It was her job to get her team out of this situation; she was the most diplomatic of the three man team after all.

The Kazekage barely restrained himself from flinching. Konoha was a fairly peaceful, if powerful, hidden village. Sarutobi was considered weak, for all his past glory. If they had a Jinchuuriki; what else were they hiding?

Sand started to swirl around the edges of the room. Gaara didn't want to kill someone like himself, but he would obey his father. His father loved him.

Naruto placed a hand on Sakura and Sasuke's shoulders, "Kazekage-sama," The Kazekage narrowed his eyes at the blond, "I have no intention of killing anyone here unless they attack me first," Naruto jerked his head to the side, indicating the rising sand, "A Tanuki is no match for a Fox."

The Kazekage blanched. The Nine Tails. Konoha had the Nine Tails contained. The boy was right; Gaara was no match for him. Gaara had no formal training and this Jinchuuriki had come to compete in the chuunin exams, to show off the control he had over his power.

"Gaara, hold," commanded the leader of Suna.

Gaara dropped the sand like it was boiling hot. He hadn't wanted to kill the boy. Something tickled the edge of Gaara's mind and the red head watched the team closely.

"Thank you, Kazekage-sama," Sakura bowed again. "If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask our jounin sensei, Kakashi Hatake."

Oh dear god. The Kazekage was suddenly glad that he'd stopped Gaara from trying to kill the blond. Even if Gaara had managed to carry out his order, dealing with the Copy-Ninja Kakashi after would have been a test. Of strength. Kakashi was said to be as strong as a Kage; he was the son of the famed White Fang of Konoha.

"Who are you," The Kazekage asked, bitter about his seeming impotence against these genin. His inability to carry out a command would strike others as weak.

"I am Sakura Haruno," The negotiator bowed a third time.

The black haired boy nodded his head in an imitation of a bow, "Sasuke Uchiha."

The Jinchuuriki actually smiled at him. He showed off his sharp canine teeth, "Naruto Uzumaki."

A Uchiha, a Jinchuuriki and a girl strong enough to be put on the same team as them. And smart enough to stop the Kazekage from trying to kill them. Haruno was one to watch. Really, they all were. They were six after all. Gaara's father brought his thoughts back to their sensei; Hatake had become chuunin at age six as well.

"I see." Placing a hand on Gaara's head, the Kazekage dropped his Killing Intent and the other genin slowly began to come back to themselves. Not bothering to wait until all the genin were paying attention, the Kazekage announced, "Congratulations to everyone who passed the written. The doors at the other end of the hall lead to the next part of the exam. There are waivers with the chuunin. You cannot commence with the second part of the exam until you have signed the waivers." His robes swirling around him, the Kazekage left to go back to where he could watch the exam in private.

Gaara stayed.

With a heavy sigh Naruto headed towards the silent boy.

"Hey. I'm Naruto," Naruto introduced himself, holding his hand out. Gaara stared at him. Naruto chuckled, "You're supposed to shake my hand and introduce yourself. It's polite."

"Gaara," Gaara whispered as he clasped their hands together and let go immediately.

"Nice to meet you, Gaara. This is Sakura and Sasuke. They're my friends."

"You have friends? They aren't scared of you?" Gaara asked in confusion. He'd never had a friend. The only person who was nice to him was his uncle.

"You'd have to ask them, I don't speak for Sakura or Sasuke on their feelings." Naruto could and did speak for them when it was about their jobs, but never for their feelings.

Sakura smiled and held her hand out, "Hi Gaara, I'm Sakura, and no; I'm not afraid of Naruto. He's actually very nice."

"Sasuke," the Uchiha grunted as Gaara took Sakura's hand. He hadn't been friends with the Godaime Kazekage in the future and felt no need to be his friend now.

"You aren't scared of Naruto either?" Gaara asked Sasuke. Sasuke shook his head. "Why not? Isn't Naruto like me?"

"In a way Naruto is like you," Sakura answered, "But Naruto uses his power to defend us as well as himself."

"Mother doesn't defend others," Gaara said seriously. He still didn't understand.

"Gaara, Shukaku isn't your mother," Naruto told the red head, "Shukaku only protects you because he wants to protect himself."

Pain filled Gaara's head and the boy cried out, clutching his head, "No! You're wrong! Mother loves me!"

"Gaara," Naruto frowned, "Get a hold of yourself. You decide what your power does and," Naruto dodged a spike of sand, "Gaara!"

"No! No! Don't hurt Naruto, Mother, please!" Gaara fell to his knees screaming, garnering the attention of the chuunin and jounin in the room.

They didn't act, only watched. Gaara was dangerous and they wanted nothing to do with getting between him and those who made him angry.

Scowling fiercely, Sakura stepped towards Gaara only to be stopped by the sand shield. She hit it once, her fist glowing a malevolent dark green instead of the usual healing green. The sand collapsed under her single assault and she slapped Gaara across the face.

Gaara fell back, looking up at her in shock, "How did? That hurt," He complained, stunned that she'd hit him.

"Stop being a baby," Oh the irony of a six year old saying that to another six year old. Naruto had a hard time not laughing. "Just because Shukaku isn't your mother doesn't mean your mother didn't love you."

"Shukaku," Naruto growled warningly at the gathering sand, "Stand down. You're not a match for me or my companions and you know it. We aren't going to hurt the Sacrifice."

"Mother hates you," Gaara whispered, staring at Naruto.

"Shukaku can hate me all it wants. It still can't hurt me. I hold the Fox." The sand trickled across the floor, weaving back and forth like water in front of Gaara. Naruto knelt down by Gaara ignoring the agitated sand and pulled Gaara into a hug. He petted Gaara's soft red hair and smiled as he whispered to his fellow Sacrifice, "Shukaku doesn't love you. That's okay, Kyuubi doesn't love me. Even if no one else loves you, I always will. You are my brother by circumstance. We were Sacrificed to save people. Your father made you into a weapon to help protect Suna just as my father sacrificed his son to protect Konoha."

Gaara held on tight to the blond and couldn't help but cry. He couldn't ever remember anyone hugging him before, even Yashamaru. It felt nice. It was something that he'd never forget.

*****xxXXxx*****


	8. Chuunin

**Title: **Chuunin

**Rating: **G

**Summary: **The exams are over. There is only one student now who doesn't get all the parental needs she has filled. Kakashi figures that even he's not doing it right, he's still trying.

**Warnings:** None. Nada. :) Unbeta'ed.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does.

**Author Note:** Yeah, sorry this one took so long (at least it's not the shortest :). I was distracted by... stuff. :) And omg (^^). omg I love that review. 'Gaara: "Because you are weak. A 6 years old girl hits harder than you"' I laughed so much. So much :) Sorry there's nothing about the exam, but I'm not a big action person... Bah. You guys have an imagination, I'll leave it up to you. Have fun :):) Also, I had to get a new email addy because I couldn't find my work emails among my ff-dot-net alerts for reviews and favs and EVERYTHING.

THANK YOU!

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"You made chuunin!" Iruka rushed forward and threw Naruto up in excitement, catching him and twirling around with Naruto in his arms, "Congratulations!"

"Aww, come on 'Ka-sensei," Naruto laughed into Iruka's hair, holding tight to his neck, "You knew that I'd make it."

Iruka twirled around again and started walking away from the group with Naruto in his arms, babbling a mile a minute at his son.

Kakashi shook his head, watching as they left and turned to Itachi, "Sasuke-chan did well. All three of them were promoted."

Sasuke grabbed tight to Itachi's hakama and looked up at him with wide eyes, "I passed, Nii-tama."

"I am proud, Otouto," Itachi smiled down at his little brother and leaned down to pick him up, setting the boy on his shoulders, "I had no doubts."

"Sakura had four points more than me," Sasuke petted Itachi's hair, playing absent-mindedly with the dark strands under his fingers, "She had a better strategy for her final match."

"Who did she fight?" It wasn't a surprise to Sasuke that no one from the Uchiha clan had gone to the exhibition matches in the final round of the exam. Suna didn't let other villages send ninja to watch the exhibition matches; the only people Suna was interested in showing off too was their daimyo and potential customers.

"Me," Sasuke grimaced, "I won, but she fought well. Her immense strength is a challenge to overcome, as is her excessive brilliance, but I am faster than her. Her strength does not matter when she cannot hit her opponent. I had to resort to overwhelming her with attacks so that she could not focus on me personally."

"Nicely done," Itachi nodded to Kakashi and turned to start on his way back to the Uchiha compound.

"Wait," Sasuke tapped his older brother on the forehead and twisted around to look at his pink headed teammate, "Sakura-chan, you'll be okay getting home?"

Sakura waved a hand at Sasuke's question, "I'll be fine. Kaka-sensei is here to walk with me." Sakura's parents hadn't been pleased when they'd been told that Sakura had been nominated for the exams. They'd been less pleased when they'd found out that she'd be travelling to Suna for a month and a half to compete.

The Haruno's loved their daughter and knew how hard life was for ninja and they sometimes couldn't deal with their six year old killer daughter. Not that they knew for sure that she'd killed people, but again, they knew of ninja life.

No matter how much they wanted to encourage their daughter, they still couldn't take a day from work just to meet her at the gates for her return, they just weren't that wealthy.

"Hn," Sasuke frowned but didn't disagree with Sakura, "Be safe."

"I'll see you tomorrow Sasuke-kun!" Sakura waved her friend and his brother off. She cocked her head to the side thoughtfully and watched until she couldn't see Sasuke anymore. "Kaka-sensei?"

Kakashi looked up from his book, "Yes?"

"If you wouldn't mind?"

"Maa, not at all," Kakashi put the violently orange book into his weapons pouch and with a grin curving his eye up, not quiet hiding his mischievousness, he scooped the girl up and settled her on his shoulders like Itachi had done with Sasuke.

There was a screech of childish laughter as the duo leapt onto the closest roof and bounded off in the direction of the Haruno's small house.

Breathless, Sakura calmed her laughter, bemused at her sensei's actions. Kakashi had never been this care-free last time. She wondered idly about the reason as to why he'd grown so cold between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five.

Before she could come up with a theory Kakashi landed on the ground right outside her door.

"Thank you Kaka-sensei," She let go of her stranglehold on Kakashi's white hair and he gently let her down.

"No problem Sakura-chan," Kakashi chuckled and rubbed the back of his head pretending to fix his perpetually messy hair, just a little embarrassed by his own childish behaviour.

Watching Kakashi be unsure for the very first time in years, Sakura smiled and lunged at him, hugging him tightly around the waist.

Kakashi patted her head self-consciously; unsure of why his tiny student was hugging him like she'd never see him again. She let go of him with a high pitched giggle and backed away, "Thank you."

"Maa." Kakashi paused and looked between Sakura and the house. "Ahh, are you going to be okay?"

Sakura scoffed, rolling her eyes, "Please, I'm a chuunin Kaka-sensei."

"I know," Kakashi did know. He was there when she'd been granted her chuunin vest, but it made him ill at ease to know that such a young child would be alone for hours before her parents got home from their work. "I just..." He trailed off.

Sakura smiled warmly, "You're worried. Thank you for caring." Kakashi had always cared, even before the team of three had stumbled into the past, but he was actually showing it now which was a nice change to see.

"I'll always care Sakura-chan," Kakashi gestured to the door, "Would you like me to keep you company?" Sasuke had his whole clan and Naruto now had Iruka to shower them with attention and love. It didn't feel right that the only girl on the team had to go home to a cold house and wait for hours for someone to notice her accomplishments.

"Err," Sakura blinked, startled by her sensei. "Umm, sure, if you want Kaka-sensei," She lead the jounin into the house. This was new for her, the concern that Kakashi was showing. "You don't have to stay if you don't want to Kaka-sensei," She insisted as she took him to the living room.

Kakashi shrugged one shoulder and sat on the least comfortable looking chair in the room. Considering that all three chairs in the room where padded to twice the size of a normal chair, it was still too soft in his mind or for his comfort.

Sakura sank to her knees at the kotatsu. There was an awkward silence and Sakura sighed, "Would you like some tea Kaka-sensei?"

"Yes!" Kakashi exclaimed, happy that there was no more silence. He coughed into his hand, "Err, yes, that would be nice."

"Do you drink your tea black Kaka-sensei?" Sakura asked as she clambered up the side of the kitchen shelves to take down the tea pot, "Or do you like cream and sugar?" Older Kakashi enjoyed a spot of sugar in his tea and occasionally indulged in a dollop of cream. She wasn't sure if his tastes had changed over six years.

"One sugar please," Kakashi followed Sakura to the kitchen for lack of anything else to do. "So what do you usually do when I dismiss you from training?"

"Oh I stop by the Academy and tutor some of the students. I have three regular students and a class on Saturday."

"A class?" Kakashi raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, Iruka-sensei doesn't mind hanging out on Saturday's to watch over my class because he's always got marking to do. I mostly help the students with their control," Sakura absently set the sugar down next to the tea she'd poured for her sensei and poured her own cup of tea, "Iruka-sensei asked if I wanted to become a teacher and I haven't answered him yet, but I don't think I want to teach."

"And why is that?" Kakashi was genuinely curious. If his student already had students of her own, he didn't see any reason why she wouldn't go for a teaching position now that she was a chuunin.

The scathing look she pinned him with surprised him, "Kaka-sensei, I am almost seven years old. Do you really think that twelve year olds want to learn from a seven year old? Let a seven year old have the power of a teacher over them? No," She concluded, "They would revolt and I would have to use some kind of mass effect jutsu on them and then I'd get reprimanded and it would just be all bad." Sakura gave a little laugh, "It's not like I don't have other things to do. I mean, on Sunday's I usually help out at the hospital and get a little tutoring here and there from the medics."

"I knew you spent part of your weekend at the hospitals," Kakashi dumped a spoonful of sugar into his cup and absently stirred it, resting his chin in his palm, propping himself up with the table, "How much have you learned?"

"Enough that the medic's are very enthusiastic when I come by after missions to give a hand for an hour," Sakura shrugged nonchalantly, "I just have a knack for control I think."

"Have you been training with genjutsu on the side as well?"

Sakura ducked her head as a light blush spread over her cheeks, embarrassed that her sensei had caught her neglecting a talent that she professed to like, "No, I may have let that fall to the wayside while I was focusing on the medical part of my training."

"I know an up and coming genjutsu specialist..." Kakashi wasn't a genjutsu specialist. If anything he was a ninjutsu specialist who knew a few illusions that he'd gotten by copying opponents. He could train Sakura in genjutsu, but not as well as someone who was deep into that area of ninja study.

Sakura looked up, interest written on her face, "Really?" Kakashi nodded and Sakura smiled brightly, "That would be great Kaka-sensei. Thank you."

"You're always thanking me," Kakashi murmured, "When I haven't really done anything at all."

"You've done more than you think." Sakura murmured back before they both fell silent.

This time their silence was a comfortable one.

*****xxXXxx*****


	9. Arrangements and Arguments

**Title: **Arrangements and Arguments

**Rating: **K+

**Summary: **Were all genius children this desirable? If so, Sasuke might be sorry that they picked the guise of 'genius' to hide behind. He's also kinda sorry that Naruto looks up to Lee in terms of taijutsu.

**Warnings:** None. (Well. Some minor violence in the form of a taijutsu spar)

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does.

**Author Note:** Aha! I was having a little trouble with this chapter, but a nice solid kick in the pants by all you POSITIVELY YOUTHFUL reviewers inspired me. I love you guys, I really really do. :) Thank you so much.

*****xxXXxx*****

"No."

"Sasuke..."

"No. I refuse."

Fugaku Uchiha rubbed his forehead in irritation, "Sasuke, it's..."

"I refuse." Sasuke sniffed indifferently, "Political or not, I am not going to."

Mikoto knelt down beside her son who was sitting calmly on his bed, "Sasuke, this is just the way it is done."

"What about Itachi? He is the heir."

"And he will marry an Uchiha because of that. You on the other hand," Fugaku tried to keep his composure when Sasuke interrupted him again.

"I am the 'spare', I know. I am only good for a political marriage. However, I am far too obstinate to be forced into an arranged marriage." Sasuke looked up at his father, "I don't see how you would allow an Uchiha to marry a Hyuga anyway."

"The Hyuga are a highly placed clan. We need to secure a working relationship with them."

"No."

"Sasuke," Mikoto tried again, "We love you. We are trying to do the best that we can for you."

Sasuke's eyes widened and he stared at his mother incredulously, "Are you seriously considering a marriage between the second son of the Uchiha's head family to a _branch_ member of the Hyuga family to be the best you can do for me?"

"It is not as bad as you think it is..."

"Mother, do you know exactly what the Caged Bird Seal incorporates?"

Mikoto and Fugaku felt themselves sharpen. No one outside of the Hyuga family knew what was included in the Seal the branch members of the Hyuga wore. "Do you?" Fugaku asked tentatively.

"I do." Sasuke didn't elaborate. He felt no need to. If he could get his family wary of the Seal then they would either try to force an answer from the Hokage or from the Hyuga. The Hyuga wouldn't want to answer and Sasuke wasn't sure about the Hokage, but if his parents got wind of the fact that the Seal could kill with a single hand sign, they would sure as hell drop their quest for an arranged marriage for him to the Hyuga. Standing up and looking down at his mother, Sasuke smiled softly at her and kissed her forehead, "I'm going to meet Naruto and Sakura at training area seven. I should be home for supper."

Leaving his parents standing in his room, Sasuke walked like a civilian instead of flickering like a ninja to the training area closest to the Memorial Stone. He needed the walk to get over his irrational anger.

Naruto met him half way to the training grounds and fell into step with him, "Hey Sasuke."

"Naruto." Sasuke muttered under his breath.

At the training ground they saw that Sakura had already started going through kata's on the grass.

Before Naruto can engage him in a taijutsu match, Sasuke sighed and sat heavily. Naruto rolled his eyes and sat beside him.

"Okay," Naruto complained, "Now what?"

"My parents want to engage me to a Hyuga."

"Really?" Naruto sounded curious and Sasuke glared at him. "Sorry, sorry," Naruto raised his hands to ward off Sasuke's dark look. "I know, I know, I should be more indignant on your behalf. So other than the fact that it's a Hyuga, and I'm assuming a branch member because no way would Hiashi let you marry either of his daughters, what's the problem then?"

"I never had an arranged marriage happen the first time," Sasuke scowled deeply. He can't think of a single reason that his life has changed so much that his parents are trying to arrange a marriage for him. In fact, he can think of more than one reason as to why they should be leaving him alone in that particular area.

"You got a marriage proposal?" Sakura dropped down beside her two teammates and Sasuke nodded, scowling even deeper. "I got one," Sakura chimed.

"Got one what?" Naruto asked confused. It took a moment and then Naruto was practically raging with fury, "Who the _hell_ thought they would _ever_ be good enough for _my_ medic?"

Sakura punched Naruto in the shoulder gently, which still sent him flying back a good three feet, "Come off it, Naruto, you know you don't have any say in my sex life."

"You don't have a sex life!" Naruto cried out, "You're six!"

"Seven," Sakura snapped back, "I just had my birthday you idiot."

"Oh, sorry, that makes such a big difference!" Naruto sneered. Naruto wasn't very accomplished at sneering, but it was still rather effective as he had learned from the best, such as Neji, Gaara and Sasuke himself.

"Oh just shut up Naruto," Sakura shook her head, "And besides, it was a Nara."

Naruto reared back, surprised, "Shika?" He asked incredulously, "You and Shika?"

"No, you dipshit," Sakura crossed her arms, pissed off at her Hokage. "The Nara are a clan. Just because they approached me for a marriage contract doesn't mean that it's to Shika," She paused and bit her lower lip, "I'm not sure that I shouldn't accept it anyways."

"What?" Naruto scuttled over to her and was inside her personal space in less than a second, "What do you mean you aren't sure you shouldn't accept?"

"Well," Sakura huffed, pushing Naruto out of her face, "It's not like any of us had any romantic ties when we came back. We aren't waiting around for someone to grow up so we can be with them you know. If a good match comes along, I don't really see the point of dismissing it outright."

"You are _ours_," Sasuke hissed, grabbing her elbow in a tight grip, eyes swirling into a red six point star. Sakura looked from Sasuke to Naruto and saw red in his eyes as well. "You are _ours_ and you aren't ever going to leave us."

"I can leave you if I want," Sakura reminded her teammates gently, "Just because we're a team doesn't mean that you own me. No one owns me," She glanced at Sasuke because he'd been the one of Team Seven to have been owned outright for three years. Naruto was owned by Konoha, but every ninja was so it didn't bother him.

Sasuke shook his head, "We don't own you Sakura, I know that and so does Naruto. But _you_ are the one that made sure we didn't fall apart. Do you remember how fucking hard it was for me in Oto? You remember what happened after I was made to kill my brother. You remember what Naruto went through with Madara. You have always been our rock Sakura. Throughout all of our pain and suffering you have been there; you have kept the watch, you have been the only one that cared no matter what." Sasuke bowed his head onto her shoulder, "We don't mean to keep you from being happy, but we still need time before we share you with others."

Sakura pulled Sasuke into a hug and held her arm out for Naruto to join in, which he did without hesitation. Sasuke wasn't wrong. She had been the backbone that held the team together for so many years. In her excitement of being accepted into a ninja clan she forgot that she already had a family.

"Okay," Sakura finally let her brothers go and they sat close to her, Naruto practically sprawling over her lap and Sasuke curled around her back, "Okay, so I say no to any arrangements right now. I'll tell the Nara's tomorrow that I can't accept. I am going to reserve the right to tell him to check again in a few years, okay guys?" She added the stipulation and she didn't think it unfair.

"Yeah," Naruto played with the hem of her shorts by her knee, "Okay, Sakura-chan."

Sasuke ran his fingers through her bright pink hair, "You can tell them that we'll be watching too."

"You guys are such idiots," Sakura complained lightly, patting Sasuke's knee that was resting by hers and fixing Naruto's bright orange collar.

"But we're your idiots," Naruto rolled onto his back, up her lap a bit and looked at her with big blue eyes and Sakura almost melted.

Naruto had the most devastating blue eyes in all the Elemental Countries. As Hokage he'd been able to charm every other Kage that he met. It didn't hurt that they were the ones coming to him with hats in hand in the first place; so when he showed up all adorable and cute they both hated how he made them look weak, and loved him for being himself.

"Yeah," Sakura sighed, "You're my idiots."

Sasuke stood up and stretched his arms above his head, "Are we done with the emotional bullshit then?" He asked petulantly, "Because I'd like to train now. I have to figure out a way for Kaa-san and Tou-san to find out about the Caged Bird Seal." Fighting had always helped Sasuke empty his mind so he could think about things clearly.

"Sure," Naruto leapt to his feet, "Stipulations?"

"Taijutsu only; we need to build our physical strength," Sasuke bounded away using his natural speed. Naruto followed after him throwing a handful of shuriken at the brunet. Sasuke dodged with ease and doubled back, managing to get a good hit in on Naruto's ribs.

Naruto didn't even flinch as he took the hit and blocked the next four. He retaliated quickly and Sasuke found himself on the defensive. The flurry of blows that Naruto unleashed were devastating whether they got through Sasuke's defence or not, so Sasuke had to start dodging to avoid gaining more damage than he had anticipated.

Sakura stood at the edge of the boys' self imposed fight boundaries, watching critically. She knew that neither boy was very good at limiting themselves even after years and years of fighting and needed to be ready for when one of them took it too far.

Sasuke palmed some senbon behind his back and the moment Naruto let a kick follow through too far, opening himself to an attack Sasuke utilized the advantage and flung the sendon in a spiral pattern at Naruto.

Half of the thin needles Sasuke threw pierced various muscles but Naruto didn't even pause as he continued his furious attack. Sasuke just needed to wait the boy out now. The field of battle was more even whenever Sasuke used senbon because he knew exactly where to place the deadly needles in order to slow the flow of Naruto's blood. With less blood moving throughout his body, Naruto would lose more and more of his unnatural stamina and the advantage that came with it. If Sasuke managed to hit enough of the critical spots on Naruto he could knock the older boy out, but that rarely happened; even with his sharingan activated Naruto moved too fast for Sasuke to rely on the senbon hitting all the correct places.

"Not today, Captain," Naruto grunted at Sasuke as he began another set of attacks, "Not this time," Naruto smirked, "This time it's my turn!" Sasuke didn't move fast enough to escape. Naruto ended the attacks with a vicious kick, throwing Sasuke high into the air. At the peak of Sasuke's flight Naruto appeared above him, " Seishun Furu Pawaa!" Naruto screamed and with a powerful drop kick that emitted a blinding flash of light Sasuke was forced back towards the ground.

The ground cratered under the force of Sasuke's landing and Naruto fell to his knees breathing heavily. There was a groan from the middle of the crater and Sakura peeked over the edge of the damaged, up risen earth.

"Sasuke?" She questioned.

Sasuke groaned again and hauled himself upright, climbing out of the hole in the ground, "Damn you, Uzumaki." Naruto let out a chuckle that sounded much like a giggle, "There wasn't any reason for you to use Lee's 'Springtime of Youth: Full Power' on me."

Naruto chuckled again, "You said taijutsu only, Sasuke. You know who I always look to when taijutsu comes to mind." Naruto reached out a hand and pulled Sasuke to his feet.

"Yeah, yeah," Sasuke turned to Sakura, "I have, at the very least, two cracked ribs. If you would please?"

Sakura grinned, "You guys need to remember that you're only training, not actually fighting," she stepped towards Sasuke. "You can pull out the senbon yourself Naruto, they're where they usually are." Sakura reached out to Sasuke with a green glow to her hands and Sasuke relaxed as the warm chakra cascaded over his chest.

Naruto watched his medic heal his captain as he absently pulled the senbon from his body. They would never break their team up again. Never.

*****xxXXxx*****


	10. Birthday Present

**Title: **Birthday Present

**Rating: **T

**Summary: **Sasuke is the last one of them to turn seven so Naruto had to find the perfect gift for him.

**Warnings:** ...None. AU

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does.

**Author Note:** I know this is a little later then the other chapters, but I was distracted by Roma-chan and her wanting more of Mangekyō Sharingan and I was indulging her :) Hope the wait was worth it for you guys.  
**Mangekyō Sharingan** is turning into a prequel to Team Tensai, which I didn't really expect because it wasn't supposed to be as long as it is. If you guys need some background to the Tensai verse, you can find Sharingan at story id: 5686039

*****xxXXxx*****

Naruto peeked around the corner of the weapons shop. Tosshin Feld was one the of the few shop keepers that had always been kind to him. Before coming back, Tosshin had supplied him with excellent weapons since he'd started at the Academy. Not only were his kunai and shuriken made with good quality steel, they had been reasonably priced.

"Naruto-kun?" Tosshin called out to him and Naruto bounced in the door.

"Tosshin-jii!"

Tosshin grinned at him from where he was polishing brilliant red armour, "How's it going Naruto? I heard you made chuunin?"

"Yes, Sir!" Naruto crowed, "Everything's going well. I'm actually looking to buy a birthday present for Sasuke. He's the last of the team to turn seven!"

"Wonderful," Tosshin finished with what looked to be an interlocking arms guard and gauntlet, "So what were you planning on getting for Sasuke-kun?" He asked as he hung the armour up.

Naruto never had managed to figure out what kind of armour Tosshin had on his walls - there were a total of seven sets - before coming back with his team.

"A nice set of senbon I think," Naruto wandered over to the small weapons display, "As a gag gift really," He paused then grinned, "What he really wants is a ninjatō."

It hadn't been long after Sasuke had returned to Konoha for good when he'd given up Orochimaru's Kusanagi and taken up a plain ANBU ninjatō to replace it.

"Ninjatō, you say?" Tosshin trailed off, thinking. "Naruto, what is Sasuke-kun's affinity?"

"Uh, lightning."

"I see," Tosshin dipped around the back of the counter and stood up with a long ornate sword case. He laid it on the counter and gestured for Naruto to come close, "I have here a sword that was left in my possession by a good friend by the name of Rose. She was an expert swordswoman. Although it is not a ninjatō, it is a shorter, double edged blade. The reason that I'd like to offer it to you is that it channels chakra darkly."

"Channels chakra 'darkly'?" Naruto frowned. He'd never heard of that before.

"You know that chakra techniques have a colour to them, correct?" Naruto nodded, "Well, the Shadow Cutter negates any colour of a chakra attack if used in conjunction with it. Say Sasuke-kun channels lightning chakra through the sword. When used with a regular sword it glows bright white, but if he is using the Shadow Cutter no matter how much chakra is put into the blade, it will stay dark. This is a sword of an assassin meant to stay in the shadows and reach out to kill without anyone knowing."

Naruto stared. Not only was the Shadow Cutter a straight, two edged blade, it cancelled the effect of the light from his Chidori. Sasuke had been bitching about the fact that he couldn't use the Chidori, with or without his weapons because Kakashi hadn't seen fit to teach him yet. With the Shadow Cutter Sasuke could use it and Kakashi wouldn't know.

"Wait," Naruto stopped himself from touching the sword, "What about sound?"

Tosshin smiled, "Same thing. No colour, no sound, no indication of power."

"Perfect." Naruto breathed as he dug out his battered frog purse. "How much?"

"You're going to give it to Sasuke-kun?" Tosshin pondered and Naruto nodded, "Then you may take it."

"For how much?" Naruto asked again.

"I have no need of it Naruto-kun," Tosshin shook his head in bemusement, "I paid nothing for the sword, I received it from a friend. Now it is my turn to pass it on to someone who will wield it with honour."

"What?" Naruto stared at Tosshin in amazement, "Free?"

"A gift," Tosshin wrapped the Shadow Cutter back in the silk cloth and put it back in the case and smiled, "The senbon, on the other hand, will be regularly priced."

"I, uh," Naruto cleared his throat, his voice squeaky, "Thank you."

Naruto paid for the senbon and collected the sword, in awe of his favourite weapons shopkeeper. "Thank you," He repeated before he opened the door to leave.

"Bring your teammates with you next time," Tosshin called back to him and Naruto left the shop with a shout of agreement.

At home, he tried the sword out. Coating it with wind chakra, he expected the black blade to glow, or resonate. It didn't. He tried a brief kata and found the all the power he was using was there; it was, as Tosshin said, invisible, soundless and impossible to sense. Naruto wiped the blade down and placed it back in the silk before wrapping it.

After he had carefully wrapped the senbon up and carefully tied a huge, vibrant orange bow on the sword case, Naruto headed out to the Uchiha compound.

Sakura met him on the way and they talked quietly while they walked.

Itachi meet them at the door, "Naruto-kun, Sakura-chan," He let them inside.

"Thank you Itachi-san," Sakura gave him a bow. Naruto waved at him and grinned. Itachi nodded to Naruto and led the two inside the house.

The sounds of a small party could be heard from the back yard and the two chuunin left their presents in the kitchen with the others before going outside.

"Sasuke-kun," Sakura smiled widely at Sasuke and gave him a brief hug.

Sasuke hugged her back and waved Ino and Hinata over. "Hinata-chan, this is my teammate, Sakura Haruno. Sakura-chan, you know Ino, and this is Hinata Hyuga."

"Hello," Sakura politely greeted the two girls and they wandered over to the punch bowl that was being guarded jealously by Chouji.

Sasuke glanced to Naruto and saw him standing under one of the larger trees in the yard by himself.

"Naruto," He walked over to Naruto, "Thank you for coming."

"No problem," Naruto refused to look at any of the children in the yard.

"You're lying," Sasuke sighed, "Naruto, you shouldn't be hiding. I know that they don't know you, but everyone is on their best behaviour. You aren't going to be shunned here."

"I'm not afraid of that," Naruto caught Sasuke's eyes for a moment then looked away, "It's just, the last time I saw them..." He trailed off.

"You were sending most of them to their deaths. I know. But we did the best that we could. As Hokage, you know that you had to sacrifice the strong so that others could live."

Naruto blinked back tears. "I remember sending out Kiba and Hinata. Kiba was so excited and Hinata was as calm as always. I never expected them not to come home."

Sasuke took Naruto into his arms, "If you had sent anyone else the mission wouldn't have been completed and we never would have gotten the information."

"They were supposed to be the best, Sasuke. Why does it feel like I failed them?"

Sasuke didn't have anything to say to that. He also remembered the last meeting Naruto had with the Inuzuka jounin and Hyuga heir. He knew, intimately, that if Naruto had sent anyone else on the mission over a hundred civilians would have died because the information that the team was sent after, would have gotten away unhindered. Because it was Kiba and Hinata they managed to kill all their opponents and Kiba had been the one to drag Hinata's body back to Konoha before dying of chakra exhaustion and blood loss just outside the gates.

"Come on Naruto, they're here now. They aren't going to die this time."

"You mean I'm not going to kill them this time," Naruto snarled, "I know that I killed them Sasuke, I know that."

"No," Sasuke pushed Naruto from him and shook him a little, "You didn't kill them Naruto; you didn't kill any of the people here." Sasuke had wondered why Naruto was so hesitant to meet his friends again even after a year and a half of being in the past. Now he knew. Naruto felt guilty.

"Yes, I did."

"Do you blame me then?" Sasuke asked forcefully, "For Shikamaru and Ino?"

"No!" Naruto exclaimed quietly, "No, Sasuke, I wouldn't do that. I would never blame you. They made their own decisions."

"But you blame yourself?" Sasuke lowered his voice, "You can't _not_ blame me and still blame yourself for the same thing Naruto."

Naruto bowed his head, "I should have tried harder. I should have sent Sakura with Kiba and Hinata. She would have been able to help fight and then heal them. They would have made it home."

"Sakura had her own mission, Naruto," Sasuke sighed, "You know that. The hospital was a mess by then and Sakura was being run ragged there."

"I don't- I can't-" Naruto stopped talking and closed his eyes. He breathed deeply for several moments then opened his eyes and looked at Sasuke. Sasuke could see weariness and acceptance in his gaze. "We'll talk about it later, Sasuke. Right now it's your seventh birthday."

"Yes, Sir" Sasuke crossed his right arm over his chest, his fist clenched. It was a salute that Sasuke had only ever given to Naruto, "Now come on, you should meet everyone."

Naruto managed to keep his tongue throughout his introductions to the rest of the 'Rookie 9'. Sasuke took pity on him after the introductions though and let him hide in a corner for the rest of the party.

Itachi spent most of the time during the party hovering over Naruto. Naruto tried very hard to ignore him. Ever since Sasuke had declared Naruto to be his best friend, Itachi had taken to watching him whenever he was around. It was a little disturbing even for Naruto; and Naruto was used to 'disturbing'.

Finally the time came for Sasuke to open his presents and the troop of children stomped through the kitchen to the living room. Sasuke sat in the seat of honour in the middle of the couch with Kiba and Sakura bracketing him. Naruto stood near the wall closest to the kitchen with Itachi, who was still hovering, while the rest of the children sat wherever there was space.

Present after present was opened and Sasuke received kunai, shuriken, a weapons pouch, a bundle of exploding tags and several adventure manga. The manga were from Sakura who knew that Sasuke had a secret love of them and refused to let anyone else know. Sasuke and Sakura laughed the manga off as a joke but Naruto could see how much they meant to Sasuke.

The only present left was from Naruto and the ex-Hokage brought it from the kitchen with his own hands. Only Sakura and Sasuke understood what it meant to Naruto to be the one to present his gifts to his second in command.

"I have two gifts for you, Sasuke," Naruto handed Sasuke the first gift and Sasuke smiled knowingly when he revealed a set of deceptively delicate looking senbon. They were made from high tempered steel and brushed down with non-reflective black paint.

"So I can win against you more often?" He asked teasingly and Naruto smiled.

"Sure, whatever makes you sleep better," He agreed amicably, "Open your other gift."

Sasuke flinched jokingly at the bow but respectfully took it off, planting it in Naruto's hair with a grin. He set the case on his knees and lifted the lid.

"Oh." Sasuke went quiet and he stared into the case. "Naruto..."

"You wanted a ninjatō, I know, but I figured that the Shadow Cutter was just as good and maybe even a little better for you. It's similar enough to a ninjatō that I though you wouldn't mind; a shorter, straight, double edged, black blade. Leather wrapping around the hilt. Small guard for more defence." Naruto paused then foraged on, "I tried it out first, before putting the bow on it. I wanted to make sure that it did what it was supposed to."

"What does it do?" Sasuke asked as he brushed his fingers carefully over the sheath of his new weapon. Naruto knew that Sasuke had a thing for chakra blades and Sasuke knew that whatever Naruto had gotten for him would be amazing.

"It channels chakra darkly and silently," Naruto puffed his chest out, "Run chakra down the blade and you'll find that it makes no colour, no noise and no indication of the weapon being charged," Naruto was paraphrasing Tosshin, but there really was no better way to put it.

Sasuke's eyebrows rose in a silent question and Naruto nodded with a smile.

Completely excited, Sasuke carefully gave the sword case, with sword, to Sakura and threw himself at Naruto, "Thank you, thank you, thank you," He whispered into Naruto's ear as he hugged him tightly.

He was thankful that because of Naruto he would be able to use the Chidori again.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome, Sasuke," Naruto hugged him back, ignoring the startled looks that their embrace was garnering. "I know you and I value you're abilities. I hope you enjoy working with the Shadow Cutter."

"I will. I promise, I will."

*****xxXXxx*****


	11. Seperate for a Mission

**Title: **Separate for a Mission

**Rating: **T

**Summary: **The ninja of Konohagakure are finally going on missions with Team Tensai because they made chuunin. Most don't want to do it ever again.

**Warnings: **Some language, allusions to torture. Children killing people (Is that a valid warning in Naruto Fandom?)

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does.

**Author Note: **Yeah, someone asked about how missions would go and I got an idea. So I wrote it. And give it to you :) It is short, but I particularly like it. Also, thank you Hebi R. for the correction :) All fixed!

*****Sakura*****  
Genma Shiranui stared at the blood splattered, pink headed girl in front of him. She was a little scary.

"Dumb idiots, trying a genjutsu against me," She shook her head and Genma inched away from her. He had expected that she would have been arrogant about her rank because of her age, but she'd been polite and nice the entire way out to the border of Hi no Kuni, though she had seemed to be a bit bitter about something.

"Uh, Ma'am?" Tsuzumi Sarugaku was poking a rather gruesome looking body at the edge of the road with the toe of his sandal, "This one is still alive."

Genma wasn't surprised to hear his fellow eighteen year old chuunin call the seven year old 'Ma'am'. He'd been thinking something along the same lines anyway.

"Good," Haruno literally skipped over to the body and flipped it over onto its back. "Oh, perfect." She grinned and Genma felt a little queasy. "I can heal this half way and he'll still be able to talk."

Genma was pretty sure that he would never want to go on a mission with this girl ever again. He couldn't imagine how she'd be in a couple of years.

She leaned over and her hands glowed green and the rends in the man's flesh started to close. Genma glanced at Tsuzumi and they shared a look of apprehension.

"Ma'am?" Haruno wasn't in charge of the mission, but she'd taken over their group fairly quickly. It was more like neither Genma nor Tsuzumi wanted to argue with the seven year old that had started to order them around like she knew what she was doing.

"Yes?" She muttered at Genma

He bit his lip, "Didn't Ibiki-san want us to bring one back with us?"

"He wants the information, not the body," She smirked up at him and he nodded reluctantly, "If I get the information we won't have to drag the body back with us."

Genma knew there was wisdom in her words, but he really didn't care to see her torture someone. She looked far too innocent to do something like that.

"Don't worry about it, Shiranui-san," She said lightly, "I have experience."

As she went about getting the information that Ibiki wanted from the missing-nin's, Genma wondered when and how and to whom she'd tortured for experience. And he wondered if Ibiki should be near children. Ever.

Her cackling laughter told Genma 'no'. Most emphatically.

*****Sasuke*****

Raidou Namiashi looked between the small Uchiha on his team and the almost completely black sword that boy carried. There was blood dripping from the sword, and the body that lay just a little bit away from them looked like it had been fried by a bolt of lightning.

"Uchiha-san?" He asked the boy.

"Yes, Namiashi-san?" The Uchiha looked up from where he was cleaning the blade of his sword.

"We, um, were supposed to take one alive." He didn't think the boy would be as bloodthirsty as he'd shown himself to be.

"There is still one in the trees to our left. I used a paralytic poison on him. He should still be breathing."

As Uchiha said, there was one body in the trees with a senbon very delicately placed in the back of the neck. Raidou had worked with Genma Shiranui before and he's seen some very good senbon work, but this? This was perfectly placed.

"Uchiha-san?" Raidou looked up to see Shinobu Mibu staring at the boy. Uchiha had put his completely awesome sword, which Raidou was going to tell Hayate Gekko about, away and had activated his sharingan. Raidou had never seen a sharingan this close before. It was mesmerising.

"Don't look into my eyes," Uchiha said idly, "I'm going to wake him up and get the answers Ibiki-san asked for."

Raidou wondered how the boy was going to do that when his sharingan mutated from three spinning tomoes to a six point star.

Uchiha poked the man between the eyes with a spark on his finger and the man tried to sit up with a yelp. He saw the Uchiha grinning down at him and opened his mouth. Before he could say anything, the Uchiha grabbed his face and forced their eyes to meet as he muttered something under his breath.

The prisoner screamed only seconds later.

Uchiha covered his hand with sharp crackling light and with a flick of his fingers, the man was jerking back and forth like he'd licked an open socket.

"Got it." The Uchiha stood over the body and Raidou shared a glance with Shinobu. This was the first mission that he'd ever gone on with a member from 'Team Tensai' and he'd thought that the kid would have been apprehensive, or a stranger to violence, chuunin or not.

"Uchiha-san," Shinobu looked disturbed, "That man, the one you killed with your sword, that wasn't your first kill, was it?"

Uchiha smirked and shook his head, "No."

Raidou doesn't want to go on another mission with Team Tensai ever again.

*****Naruto*****

Izumo Kamizuki watched in a kind of awe as the small blond child licked the blood off his lips. Uzumaki had been silently angry the whole way to Otafuku Gai and the newest chuunin on the team, though not the youngest because that was Uzumaki, felt a little scared.

"Are you done, Uzumaki-san?" Ibiki Morino said laconically. Uzumaki looked up from the body he was standing in and smiled at them.

"Done as a good pot pie," He stepped gingerly out of the caved in chest cavity he was in and jerked his feet a little, splattering blood off his sandals.

"Did you leave any alive?"

"Um," Uzumaki rubbed the back of his head, getting blood on his hair, "I think the one to your left is still alive."

"Is he capable of answering questions?" Ibiki scowled as he asked.

"He will be." The light in Uzumaki's eyes scared Izumo and he hoped to dear god that he'd never be put on a mission with one of Team Tensai again.

Ibiki gestured to Kotetsu Hagane and the bandaged man dragged the body over to the torture and interrogations expert.

"No," Ibiki quirked a scary smile at the two chuunin, "Give him to Uzumaki. Let the boy try his hand."

Wide eyed and incredulous, Kotetsu continued dragging the body to Uzumaki. "Sir," He said as he let the body go.

"Thank you, Hagane-san," Uzumaki smiled. It would have been a very innocent smile, if Kotetsu hadn't just watched the boy step out of an enemy's chest cavity.

Izumo didn't watch. He didn't care what Ibiki or Uzumaki thought, he didn't want to see a child torture someone.

The screams were loud and the information that Uzumaki collected came in bursts of tears and pain.

When Uzumaki was finished with the man he'd been interrogating, he killed him quickly and Izumo almost flinched at the sound of the breaking neck.

Izumo came out of the trees when he was sure that Uzumaki was done with the man.

"Are we done?" Uzumaki asked Ibiki with a smile on his face and Ibiki smiled back.

"Sure, kid." Ibiki said, sounding impressed. Izumo didn't think that Ibiki had ever seen Uzumaki torture someone before. It's the only explanation as to why the tall man is expressing his pleasure at the way the boy did the job.

"Great. I want to meet up with Sakura and Sasuke soon." Uzumaki's face went dark with some kind of emotion that Izumo didn't want to think about and he growls, "I swore that we'd never be broken up. Not this team."

"You weren't broken up, Naruto-kun," Ibiki waved Uzumaki off, "You are all on the same mission."

"But we're not together," Uzumaki muttered, "I didn't want Sasuke to go alone."

Izumo was surprised. He would have thought that Uzumaki would have worried about the girl on the team, not the Uchiha.

"Sasuke-kun will be fine," Ibiki told him with a dark smile. Uzumaki shrugged his shoulders.

"I know he will. I'm worried about his team mates. I mean, Sasuke hasn't been on a mission without Sakura or me before and I don't know what's going to happen when he starts killing."

Kotetsu looked at Izumo and both of them got wide eyed quickly. "Is he dangerous?" Kotetsu asked suddenly.

Uzumaki stopped and stared at him, incredulous. "He's an Uchiha," He stressed, "He's very dangerous."

****xxXXxx****


	12. Bigger Changes

**Title: **Starting on the Big Changes

**Rating: **M

**Summary: **So they've established that they're geniuses. They've established that they're powerful. They have places in the ranks of Konoha ninja. Now it's time to start making the big changes.

**Warnings:** Allusions to torture. Death. AU.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does.

**Author Note:** I would apologized for making you guys wait for a month and a half for this chapter, but I did post on my author page that I am a slow writer. :) Also, I've been writing other stuffs, like a Black Jewels Trilogy/Naruto crossover(which is at just over 13K and isn't done yet LOL). And porn. Lots of porn.

OMG. YOU GUYS. 90 REVEIWS FOR THE LAST CHAPTER.

_**I LOVE YOU**_. Thank you. So much! I'm glad that all of you like this fic :DD And ladywinterfic, I just had to use your 'twitchy!Itachi about blondes' :)

*****xxXXxx*****

Kabuto stared up at the three small faces that hovered above him. He was strapped down to a low table and he couldn't move. His muscles had been paralyzed using a medical technique he'd never heard of before, and his healing/regeneration didn't seem to categorize it as an injury, but he could still feel his entire body; his nerves were still working, he just couldn't move.

He had been sure for years that no one knew about his connections with Orochimaru. He'd graduated from the academy just a few days previous and he'd been a plant within Konoha from the very beginning. He didn't think that Orochimaru-sama knew that he knew he was one of the several experiments that had managed to survive.

He wondered if he was going to survive this.

He was pretty sure he wouldn't.

He'd heard about Team Tensai before and he'd kept Orochimaru updated on everything that was happening in Konoha. The fact that the Container had graduated early and had team mates just as young as himself was worthy of a special notice being sent off to the small village that was slowly building.

"So, how are we going to do this?" The dark haired boy, who was four years younger than himself and a rank higher, asked the blond.

The blond hummed under his breath and rubbed the back of his head, "I suppose that since he's got that annoying healing thing, we could drain his chakra then kill him."

"Okay," The girl-child scowled, "So. Two choices. Either we drain his chakra or we make him drain it."

"Which is more painful?" The dark haired boy asked.

"Draining him will hurt of course," She said idly, "But I think you'll like the second option better."

"Why would Sasuke like the second one," The Jinchuuriki asked with a raised eyebrow.

The girl chuckled evilly and Kabuto felt shivers up and down his spine. "The second option is more fun for Sasuke because Kabuto's regeneration is fuelled by his chakra. That means that the more he uses it, the more his chakra drains."

A smirk came over the Uchiha boy's face, "Oh really?"

Kabuto's eyes widened and he broke out in a cold sweat.

"Why... why are you doing this?" He whispered his question in a scared voice, "I just became a genin! I haven't done anything!"

The Uchiha turned his face from the girl and smiled down at him sadistically, "You work for Orochimaru." He said calmly, "That makes you an enemy. One that shouldn't ever be allowed to do what you are going to do."

"No! I'm a Konoha ninja!"

The Jinchuuriki bent down, his face cheek to cheek with Kabuto and the silver haired boy could feel his breath on his ear, "You are a traitor. One that can't be redeemed." He straightened and looked at the Uchiha. "I'm not going to watch," He said, "But remember, Sasuke," His voice softened, "Have fun. Don't take it too seriously." He smiled, turned, and walked away.

Kabuto watched Uzumaki leave and his eyes looked back to the Uchiha and Haruno. Haruno was a medic, she worked in the hospital over the weekends and he'd seen her around when his foster father took him on rounds. He'd had no idea that she had this hidden in her.

The Uchiha, on the other hand, wasn't much a surprise. All Uchiha's had a sadistic side. The fact that this Uchiha was seven though; that was the surprise.

"Uchiha-san?" Kabuto blinked watery eyes, fake tears rolling down his cheeks, "Why are you doing this? I'm loyal. I am."

"I believe you," The Uchiha said idly as he brought his hand up. Kabuto realized exactly how much this was going to hurt when he saw crackling chakra around the boy's fingers and palm. "I believe that you're loyal to Orochimaru."

That was Hatake's Raikiri that the Uchiha was utilizing.

The hand descended slowly.

It didn't take long for Kabuto to start screaming and crying for real.

He had been right about the pain though; Haruno had been around the entire time making sure he never passed out from pain or exhaustion.

It hurt like a son-of-a-bitch for twenty-six hours. Then he felt nothing.

**

Naruto was waiting outside in the antechamber when Sasuke and Sakura came out of the room they had managed to get Kabuto into. He silently handed them a wet rag each so they could clean their faces. When their faces were bright and their hands clean, he took one of each of the hands and led them out of the antechamber to the dining hall and sat them down. He set food in front of them and watched them eat like ravenous beasts.

It had been twenty-six and a half hours since their last meal, so it was expected for them to be hungry.

Sasuke's eyes were still bright forty-five minutes later as he sat back in his chair, wiping a few crumbs from his lips.

"How do you feel?" Naruto asked. Although he and his team had tortured people before, it had never before been with the express purpose of pain until death.

Kabuto had been special though. Even Naruto had agreed the boy couldn't be saved. They'd watched him for a year, they'd seen the medical reports in the future about the changes Orochimaru had done to Kabuto's brain. Kabuto would never have served anyone but Orochimaru. He'd been bred and trained to serve only Orochimaru and to be an emergency body, just in case.

"I feel..." Sasuke closed his eyes and smiled. It was the most peaceful smile Naruto had ever seen on Sasuke. "Wonderful. Like a weight has been lifted."

"He'll never harm Sasuke or you again. Or Tsunade." Sakura closed her eyes and smiled blissfully, "To know that he's gone is... It's like the world had been made a better place. After having to deal with him for so long it's a relief to know that he'll never kill or injure anyone again."

"You should get some sleep," Naruto stood and drew a two second seal in blood on the wall. A door opened up and three beds could be seen, "I'll deal with the body. You guys are tired."

Sasuke stood first and went to Naruto's side. He gently touched Naruto's shoulder and looked him deep in the eyes, "Thank you, Hokage-sama." He whispered sincerely.

Naruto pulled Sasuke into a hug and whispered back, "You're welcome, Commander." This was one of the very few times that Naruto had agreed, and even advocated for, the death of someone. But he knew what Kabuto had done in the future. Had known what the twisted man loved to do. Had seen the man at work over his operation table.

It had been a gross perversion of the medical profession. He was thankful that it was over.

Now he just had to get rid of the body. He was good at doing that.

Naruto let go of Sasuke and shooed his two best friends to bed. He tucked Sakura in and petted Sasuke's hair. Sasuke muttered a curse at him as he drifted off and Naruto chuckled lightly.

He found that the body was still tied down so he untied it and created a few shadow clones to help me get the older boy off the table.

The blood didn't bother him.

He'd prepared a mass seal outside of their meeting area to dispose of the body. The seal hid him and the body from every sense that could give him away. He'd originally developed the seal for his ninja to wear on their uniforms to make them even stealthier than ever before. It had worked well. The only mistake that he'd made while developing it was that it had been made too late to save half of the Konoha Twelve.

Naruto methodically cut the body into smaller pieces and as he did so, he used the Kyuubi to call out to the local flesh eating animals in the area. With each animal that appeared, he gave it a chunk of Kabuto and watched them eat it before allowing them out of Kyuubi's call.

He didn't like to order the animals around using Kyuubi's power, but it was important to get rid of all of Kabuto. The animals could do that for him and they even got a meal out of it. The moths came quickly and chewed the ever living hell out of the bloody clothing and Naruto used a fire technique to finish the rest off.

When all that was left of Kabuto was his teeth and bones, Naruto powered up a Wind: Rasenrengan and destroyed the offending pieces of the bastard.

He'd never liked Kabuto.

Sasuke and Sakura were still sleeping when he went back into the sealed hide-away. He cleaned the dining room and bloody torture room and had a quick shower.

He was watching over his comrades when Sasuke sat bolt upright, eyes wide and sharingan spinning. He blinked rapidly and Naruto went over to the bed and sat on the side.

"Sasuke?"

"Naruto," He took a shuddering breath and calmed. Naruto waited for him to continue speaking. Sasuke wasn't one to be pushed into speaking and Naruto wasn't about to make him feel uncomfortable. He knew that Sasuke was willing to do anything for him, to make up for abandoning him and almost killing him.

Not that Naruto thought he had anything to make up. Sasuke had more than proved his loyalty to Naruto and Konoha in his mind.

"Naruto," Sasuke licked his lips, "Thank you."

"For what, Sasuke?"

"For letting me kill him," The Uchiha bowed his head, "I will never forget your kindness."

"It wasn't a kindness, Sasuke," Naruto placed a finger under Sasuke's chin and raised his head so they could look each other in the eyes. "Killing Kabuto was something that you needed to do."

"Still," Sasuke's lips lifted in a smile, "Thank you."

"How are you feeling?"

"Tired," Sasuke sighed, "But better. It's a relief that we don't have to worry about him anymore. And to know that Orochimaru is without a backup body."

"I know. I've been thinking," Naruto shifted and his eyebrows drew together in a pinched expression, "I know we all agreed to not say anything about having come to the past, but..." He shook his head suddenly, "Never mind. It was a stupid thought."

"Nothing you think is stupid, Hokage-sama." Sasuke smirked, "Well. Okay, most of what you think isn't stupid. But this? This plan to not tell anyone, why don't you like it?"

There hadn't been second thoughts about their plan in the future. But then again, they had been twenty-eight then. Now they were children with childish hormones.

"What would happen if we told Kakashi?" Naruto asked. He needed to know what Sasuke thought about it. Technically they were older than Kakashi by almost a decade, but they both still saw him as thirteen years older.

"He'd report to Sandaime," Sasuke said promptly. "After reporting to Sandaime, we'd probably get hauled in for various reasons to be interrogated about the future and then... Well... I don't see how we would possibly be allowed to stay with our families. We're dangerous. We're smart. We know everything there is to know about Konoha at this point in time. If Danzo found out..."

"So what would happen if we killed Danzo and then told Kakashi?"

"Unfortunately Danzo hasn't done anything at this point to warrant death. He's loyal to Konoha to a point of sedition, but he hasn't crossed the line yet. You know this, Naruto," Sasuke shook his head, "We went over this before coming back. Danzo didn't get creepy about war mongering until the Clan was wiped out. With the Uchiha still on Konoha's side, Konoha is, and seems, a lot tougher than it did after they were all dead. Danzo shouldn't be too worried about things right now."

"I know," Naruto's shoulders slumped. He did know.

"Guys?" Sakura got out of her bed and wandered over, crawling in between the boys, "Do you think a search party will be sent out for Kabuto?"

"I don't see why not," Sasuke told the girl as he wrapped his arms around her, "He is a Konoha nin."

"Yeah, but... He's only been genin for a few days."

"He's the adopted son of the head of the hospital, Sakura-chan," Naruto leaned against the two of them and Sakura's arms wrapped around his shoulders. "There'll be a search."

"Is the circumstantial evidence that we left behind about Kabuto's connection with Orochimaru going to be enough for Sandaime to act?"

"He might not act, but he will, at the very least, look into it. He might even assign a studious chuunin to look into the paperwork." Naruto grinned, "And there is no one more studious than Iruka and you."

Sakura laughed and played with Naruto's hair, "Thanks, Hokage-sama."

"No, no, it's all truth! I swear!"

"Yeah, sure," She kissed the top of his head and then laid her own head on Sasuke's shoulder. "Do we really need to be having second thoughts about telling someone? I mean, we've been doing well so far. We even managed to get to Gaara early."

Naruto sighed, "I guess not." He was a little disappointed, but his Head Medic had always had good reasoning.

"Alright, I'm going back to sleep. We only have one more day off and then we have to meet with Kakashi to go back on missions." Sasuke flopped back on the bed and Sakura bounced with him with a giggle. Naruto untangled their limbs and walked Sakura back to her bed.

"Alright you guys, go to sleep. You're right about the second thoughts thing. I guess my head is just all mixed up about things right now. Moving in with Iruka," He glared at Sasuke, "And now with Mikoto-sama coming over every other day when we're home to do laundry and order us around, I've just been out of sorts. I've never lived with a mother figure. Or had a real grandmother figure. Tsunade-baa-chan doesn't count because she was always hitting me."

Sakura laughed and Sasuke rolled his eyes.

"Go home, Naruto," Sasuke rolled to his side and curled up, pulling the red and orange blanket around his body so he wouldn't get cold, "Iruka-sensei is probably worried about you. And if he's worried about you, Mother will be worried."

"Yeah," Sakura piped up from her own bed, "And then there'll be a man hunt headed by Itachi-san to find Sasuke!"

"Oh fuck off," Sasuke grumbled, irritated. Thankfully Itachi had stopped stalking him for the most part, but sometimes Itachi just had to know where Sasuke was. He sighed and then laughed a bit with Sakura, "Just be grateful that he's stopped freaking out whenever he sees Ino with you."

Naruto blushed as he remembered the year before when he'd accidently given Itachi a complex about blondes with pig tails, "Have I ever said sorry about that?"

"Nah, it's okay," Sasuke murmured with a smile as his eyes closed, "You showed me the memory of it. Freaking... hilarious..."

Naruto turned the lights off and closed the door behind him.

His people were safe and Kabuto was dead and everything that he'd set out to accomplish for their mini vacation had been completed.

Now he just had to go home and weather the ninja-mom rage of Iruka for vanishing without a word for two days.

Oh joy.

*****xxXXxx*****


	13. Devious Events

**Title: **Devious Events

**Rating: **T

**Summary: **They've killed their first target. It went well. But Naruto isn't sure he has the stomach for death in that manner again. Iruka doesn't like that Team Tensai has tortured people, so he investigates.

**Warnings:** None. Surprisingly.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does.

**Author Note:** I had a few people say that Team Tensai was sadistic in the last chapter. I know that it was horrible to kill Kabuto by way of torture, but considering everything that he's done in canon, and that fact that the three of them are suffering from PTSD, I figured the first kill they did (had planned) would be gruesome. They had to take it out on someone, all that pain and feelings of loss and helplessness. Anyway, hopefully this will soothe you guys a little about why it came off as the three of them have turned into sadists. :) This is still a gen story, so it's a BYO-Subtext.

-Also, this part has deviated from humor to actual plot. I've gotten to a point where a collection of segueing one-shots is not good enough for me, so I've delved deeper and come up with a bit of an actual story line :) Hope you guys like the introduction for it!

-_SPOT THE QUOTE_ is over! Our two winners are _Gobo_(If you could send me what you want and an addy to send it, I'll get right on it) and _Validan_! The Quote was 'As you wish.' From the movie Princess Bride :D

*****xxXXxx*****

"I don't think I can do that again." The words came whispered, through the darkness of the room.

Sasuke rolled on his side and looked towards where Naruto was lying on his futon. "Do what?"

"I know that you guys felt good about it, and I know that it really had to be done, to get rid of him but..." Naruto's voice petered out and he sighed, his voice full of sorrow and self loathing, "I can't do that again, Sasuke. I really can't."

Iruka stood outside the door to Naruto's room and channeled chakra to his ears to listen in on the boys. He could hear mumbling through the door and looked at his watch. It was late and they should have been asleep. Naruto had convinced Mikoto and himself to let Sasuke come over for a night and he was curious to know what they were talking about at one o'clock in the morning.

He was going to burst in on the two of them and give them an earful or two for being up so late, especially after Naruto had gone missing for two days without a word, but then he heard Sasuke speak.

"...want to kill him?" Iruka started at the words. He knew that Naruto and Sasuke had killed, it was part and parcel of being ninja, but to hear seven year old Sasuke say something that in such a dead tone of voice was tugging at his heart.

"Want? Yes. I wanted to kill him." Naruto sighed again, "But I don't think I can let you torture another one. Not unless it's part of a mission."

"This is our mission, Naruto." Sasuke's voice turned cold instead of dead and Iruka suppressed a shiver.

"Killing is our mission. Not torture."

"And what about him? Are you going to deny me him?"

Iruka waited. Naruto had to respond and he wanted to know who exactly it was that Sasuke was so hard up to kill. And, but the sound of it, torture.

"No. No, I won't deny you your right to kill him. But I can't condone torture. I _won't_ condone it, not again." Naruto sounded both defeated and commanding. Iruka wasn't sure how he was able to sound both seeing how oxymoronic those attitudes were, but Naruto somehow managed.

He wondered who Sasuke tortured.

"Naruto," There was a strange inflection in Sasuke's voice when he spoke again and Iruka was sure that he'd heard it before. Not from Sasuke towards Naruto, but somewhere, sometime, Iruka had heard someone say another's name in that way, "You know what he did. All too well."

"I do," Naruto was quiet, but strident, "But we didn't need to torture him like that. And certainly not for that long."

There was movement in the room and Iruka wondered what was going on. He frowned and then his expression cleared when Sasuke told Naruto to shove over.

He was surprised that Sasuke was willing to share a bed with anyone after what had happened to him, but he guessed that since Naruto was smaller than him and around his age, it probably wouldn't seem the same.

"Naruto," There was that strange inflection again, "We are still following the outlines of the mission, right?"

"Yes," Naruto's voice was muffled and Iruka considered peeking in to see the boys. Then Naruto continued, so he waited. "We're still on the mission. We know who the next target is. There's no reason for torture though."

"As you wish," Sasuke murmured. He paused and his voice turned a bit ashamed, "I'm... sorry, Naruto. I never meant to go as far as I did. Sakura, either."

"I know," Naruto muttered warmly, words still muffled, "I know." He sighed one last time and both boys fell silent.

Iruka waited for about fifteen minutes and when they sounded asleep, he swung the door open carefully. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see Naruto and Sasuke curled up together on Naruto's futon. Sasuke's arms were holding tight around Naruto's waist and Naruto's face was buried in Sasuke's neck.

They breathed easily, wrapped up in each other's space.

Iruka smiled gently and tip-toed into the room. He pulled Naruto's bright orange blanket from their feet and tucked it around their shoulders, kissed them both on the forehead with a smile and closed the door behind him as he left.

In his room, Iruka thought about what he'd heard. There was no way to misconstrue the fact that they had been talking about torturing someone to death. That it was something that they had already done. Iruka was pleased to know that Naruto didn't have the stomach to do it again.

Though he was going to take a strip out of Kakashi Hatake's hide for sending his team of children on a T&I field mission. Who in their right mind took seven year olds on a capture and torture mission?

Then again, he'd been hearing things about Kakashi that made him think the twenty year old wasn't in his right mind.

It probably didn't help that he had to look after three genius children as well.

Naruto was quick to wake Iruka in the morning and Iruka cursed under his breath. If there was one thing more loud and willing to wake someone up than Ibiki Morino's alarm clock, it was Naruto.

He got them fed and dressed and out the door with little trouble. He knew that they wanted to go see Sakura and train some more and he was glad to see them go.

He had a discussion pending with Kakashi.

Iruka found Kakashi standing in front of the Memorial Stone, pervy orange book in hand, murmuring to his deceased comrades.

"Kakashi-san," Iruka's voice was cold and Kakashi rolled his eye towards him in question. "I'd like to speak with you."

"Maa," Kakashi waved his book at him, "What's up, Iruka-sensei?"

"The last mission that your team went on..."

Kakashi's eye widened and he hummed, "It really wasn't my decision to send Tensai on that mission, Iruka-sensei."

"Then who, exactly, nominated a team of seven year olds for a T&I field mission?" Iruka's tone was scathing. It was always left up to the team leaders to accept or decline a mission. Even if all of Tensai were chuunin, they were still under the rules of genin teams by a majority vote of the Council.

It helped for getting those restrictions placed that Sasuke was on the team.

The Uchiha were fanatical about protecting their own.

"Actually," Kakashi's eyebrow turned down and his eye squinted, "You aren't the only one questioning that. I talked to Inoichi-san and Ibiki-san about that and they don't have any answers either. All they know is that the order was signed and stamped."

"Whose name was on the papers?"

"Let's find out," Kakashi idly grabbed his shoulder and flickered, dragging Iruka along beside him.

"Kakashi-san, Iruka-sensei," Raidou Namiashi looked up from the desk and Iruka realized that he was once again in the T&I department HQ's.

He hadn't been here since his questioning by Ibiki about becoming a sensei at the Academy.

"Raidou-san," Kakashi's eye curved up signaling that he was smiling, "We'd like to see the orders that accepted my team on their last mission."

Raidou rubbed burn scar across his cheek and nose and sniffed. The tall man had been having sinus problems since he'd gotten burnt. "Er, kay..." He muttered and went to the filing cabinets. He perused them, his finger trailing along the labels and murmured the words to himself.

Iruka wondered if he had a concussion.

"Aha!" He slammed one of the drawers open and riffled through the papers haphazardly. Iruka resisted an urge to flinch. He was very much into proper organization of papers and wondered why, exactly, there wasn't a paperwork ninja around to do the filing. He'd never before seen a department without one or two wandering around.

He couldn't imagine it being very hard to do simple filing for the department; he knew Ibiki was a stickler for properly finished paperwork even if he usually didn't to care how it was filed.

Kakashi took the papers offered to him and looked over them. He stared at the signature on the bottom and then passed the papers to Iruka.

Iruka frowned at Kakashi then looked to the signature as well. It was a henohenomoheji.

"That's not my signature chop," Kakashi told him quietly. Iruka's frown deepened and he looked up when he heard someone clearing their throat.

Inoichi Yamanaka stood in the doorway and Iruka felt his back straighten. He'd never actually met Inoichi in a professional sense before. At least, not on his side of the profession; meeting the Head of the Yamanaka Clan about the clan children in school was a _lot_ different than meeting the Head of the T&I department.

He gestured for them to follow him and Iruka trailed behind Kakashi, embarrassed. He knew that he had the clearance to be poking around T&I, but he'd never done it before. He was the type of man to keep his nose clean.

"So you're looking into the mission Team Tensai did," Inoichi mused idly. It wasn't a question, Iruka didn't answer. "I see Raidou found the paperwork."

"Yep," Kakashi replied lazily, "Found something interesting too," He took the papers from Iruka's light grasp and handed them over to Inoichi, "That sig-chop at the end?" Inoichi nodded, looking at the henohenomoheji, "That ain't mine."

The Head of T&I's pupil-less eyes sharpened and he glanced up at the two teachers. "Really now?"

Iruka cleared his throat and Inoichi looked up at him. He blushed, but spoke, "Why wasn't this caught before? I mean, they're seven years old."

Inoichi leaned back and lifted his chin, studying Iruka. Then he smirked, "That's a very good question," He said and looked over the papers again. "Seems that it went through the proper channels, all the other signatures are there."

"I didn't sign that," Kakashi said again, "And that means that some of the other signatures may be faked as well."

"True, true." Inoichi hummed and stroked his chin, "I'll look into this. Was there anything else, Kakashi-san? Iruka-sensei?"

Both younger ninja shook their heads and Inoichi waved them out of his office. Iruka turned to Kakashi to speak to him only to find a few floating leaves where the jounin had once stood.

"Bastard..." He muttered and stalked out of the T&I building. The sun was bright in his face and he shielded his eyes with a hand.

At least now he knew that Kakashi hadn't let the children go on the mission, but that mean _someone else _had forged Kakashi Hatake's signature and managed to get three seven year olds out on a dangerous B-rank mission without their jounin sensei and had had them torture people.

Iruka shivered even with the warmth of the sun on his skin and started towards the Academy. Sakura was holding her class in an hour and he needed to finish up his weekend marking.

At least he knew that someone high up in the chain of command was looking into what had happened. He was undoubtedly glad that he'd gone to find Kakashi this morning and brought this ... thing, whatever it was, into the light. He wondered if Kakashi would have investigated on his own, if he even _cared_ that his students had been sent on such a mission, but couldn't let himself continue thinking that.

He had to believe that Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura were in the best hands possible.

*****xxXXxx*****


	14. Self Sacrifice is Our Duty

**Title:** Self Sacrifice is Our Duty

**Rating:** T

**Summary:** He's doing it all for Konoha. Team 'Tensai' is of great interest to him as well. How can they be so much better than his young ninja when they allow their emotions to rule them?

**Warnings:** Nada :)

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does.

**Author Note:** I don't know how many of you guys thought that the team had forged Kakashi's chop in the last chapter, but considering how much they want to stay together, did you really think that they'd put themselves on a mission where they got split up? This should clear that little mystery up :D

*****xxXXxx*****

Danzo Shimura sat at his table and slowly sipped his brown rice tea. It was a meager indulgence that he rarely allowed himself.

He studied the files in front of him, flipping back and forth between the three of them. He had been intrigued to find that not only was the Uchiha and the Container interesting, but Haruno was as well. Another thing that had surprised him was Sarutobi's decision to place the three young ninja on the same team. Sarutobi was well known for his soft heartedness, thankfully only in Konoha, and so finding that he'd arranged that team himself had made Danzo curious.

A gentle wind blew in from the west and Danzo refrained from lifting his head and turn his face into the breeze. He'd always liked the breeze, but he was far to invested in his work at the moment to let his attention wander.

"Danzo-sama," A masked man at the edge of the room spoke up, "Mission complete."

"Good work. Leave now. Take four days to yourself and then return to duty." Danzo may have completely believed in the Ninja Code, but he did reward those who followed his orders.

He flipped open the report from the Torture and Interrogation squad again. Not a single emotion on his face betrayed him as he read the report.

So the 'Tensai' team was well versed in torture. A surprise, given their jounin sensei. He was undoubtedly pleased that he arranged for the team to take that mission. He had been sure that someone would have interfered with his plans for the team, but there was no gain without risk. And this risk had been worth it.

The sounds of shuffling footsteps made the man snap his head up and glare with his good eye at the door. He had instructed that he not be disturbed unless he needed to be informed of a mission's status. And the only mission that had been being run currently was the one that Hyo had just reported as complete.

There was no knock on the door before it swung open.

Danzo stared at the girl who had dared to interrupt his solitude.

He didn't get the chance to reprimand her.

"Danzo Shimura," She stepped into the light and her startlingly pink hair glowed in the setting sun, "You have done a very, _very_ bad thing."

"Sakura Haruno."

"Yes," Her lips twisted up in a smirk, "Congratulations on being the first person to ever fake Kakashi-sensei's chop well enough to get it past the office nin."

"Apparently it didn't matter, if you knew." Danzo sat back in his chair. He waved a hand at the chair across the table from himself, "Please, have a seat."

"I would love to," Her smirk changed to a soft smile and she primly sat in the chair offered to her. "I would like to know why you are so very invested in the Uchihas."

Danzo studied the girl sitting at his table. She was small, smaller even than his newest recruits, and though she had a smile on her face, it did not reach her eyes.

She was as emotionless as he was during business.

Impressive.

"My interest in the Uchihas is my business," He told her. She was only chuunin after all, he had no need to be wary in her presence.

"And the Uchiha's are my business," She countered easily, "A teammate of mine is Uchiha. Therefore anyone looking too closely at the Uchiha clan is my business." Her smile turned sharp at the edges, "And I would like to remind you that as of this moment, you have a failure percentage of over sixty."

"I have failed four missions in my life," Danzo pointed out, pleased with her coolness, but not pleased with her perceived notions of him.

"And Ne has a failure percentage of over sixty." She repeated in a calm voice.

Danzo realized at that moment that she was leading up to something akin to blackmail. His hand twitched under the table but before he could create a single handseal, a senbon pinned his hand to the underside of the table. He turned to see Sasuke Uchiha step out of the shadows.

"Your cursed seal will not be placed on my teammates," The Uchiha said calmly.

Danzo was even more impressed than he had been before. The boy had managed to sneak past him, get into his house and the room he was in, without a single flicker of the wards.

Not even Hyo could manage that.

There was a brush of something soft against his cheek and Danzo jerked back, twisting back to look at what had touched him.

Blond hair. Then he saw blue eyes and whisker marks.

Jinchuuriki.

"Naruto Uzumaki."

"Hi," The blond grinned, "Danzo-_sama_," He drawled out the suffix on Danzo's name. Danzo refused to frown. He would not let the child intimidate him. "What a pleasure it is to meet you."

Sarcasm wasn't the boy's forte.

"What are you doing here?"

"Well," Uzumaki blinked innocently. Danzo thought it was a rather good cover, innocence. "See now, that's what you have to figure out. Are we here to talk to you?" He stepped lightly around the table to flank Haruno, "Are we here to blackmail you?" The Uchiha moved to flank the girl child as well, "Or are we here to kill you?"

"Is that a threat?" Danzo pulled his pinned hand from the table, grasped the senbon with his teeth and pulled it out. He spat it at the floor where it imbedded into the floor with an almost silent thump.

"Oh, don't get me wrong," Uzumaki shrugged his shoulders and rubbed the back of his head. Danzo found his actions familiar, but couldn't place them, "We'd love to kill you. We could do it too." The child wasn't bragging. Danzo knew that he'd heard Haruno enter his house only because she allowed him too. The other two of her teammates had gotten past the wards and his ninja without raising a single alarm. If they had wanted him dead, he never would have known it until he was lying on the floor, watching his life's blood pool under his body.

"But we don't want to kill you right now," The Uchiha sneered. For a seven year old boy, his sneer was impressive. Uzumaki set a hand on his shoulder and the Uchiha visually calmed, the sneer falling off his face and an impassive look replacing it.

Danzo was becoming more and more impressed with the children the longer he spent trapped in the room with them. Not that he hadn't been impressed before, but there was something about these children that grated on his nerves and made him nervous.

He didn't show his nervousness though. There wasn't any reason to and there wasn't any way in all the hells of the afterlife that he would allow them to know just exactly how on edge he was with them around.

Haruno leaned forward and rested her elbows on his table, her chin in her hands, "See, Danzo-san, we have several problems. And we think that you can help." He green eyes narrowed and Danzo could feel something creep up his spine. "But only so much."

"The Uchiha clan," The Uchiha spoke then, "Just as an example. They had planned on rebelling against Konoha and Sarutobi. Now they are reconsidering their ways." His black eyes swirled into red and Danzo became fascinated with the six point star in the child's eyes, "What do you have planned for that?"

Shaking himself out of his daze, Danzo straightened his spine and tried to stare down at the ninja younger than his own grandchildren. It didn't quite work the way he wanted it too.

"If they don't plan on rebelling, then they won't need to be dealt with."

Uzumaki closed his eyes and turned his face away. He breathed slowly and evenly. "You disappoint me, Danzo," He said softly, "A massacre is _not_ an acceptable way to 'deal with' people."

Another shiver, this one much more pronounced, ran down Danzo's spine. They knew. They knew of his eventual plans for the Uchihas.

One of them was an Uchiha. That meant that the Uchiha know that he'd planned on killing them all. Using an Uchiha to do his dirty work.

But perhaps he could use this to his advantage. He knew that Sasuke was loyal to Konoha over his family. That will be of great use to him. After all, if the elder brother was too focused on Sasuke, he won't be any good for Danzo to use.

"If they rebel, if they are allowed to take up arms against Konohagakure, there will be civil war," He let his voice take a coaxing tone and he looked directly at the Uchiha, "A lot of Konoha civilians will die."

"And they've changed their minds," Uzumaki said, "Which means that they won't need to be 'dealt with'."

The Uchiha twisted his neck, stretching until it cracked in the silent room, "I am not loyal to Konoha, Danzo," He said, seeing underneath Danzo's words and meaning, seeing what he was truly trying to do, "I am loyal to my Hokage, and only to my Hokage."

Danzo couldn't help the frown that curled his lips downwards. The Uchiha hadn't said who his Hokage was. And that was telling.

Green eyes captured his attention and the girl child sniffed haughtily, "You'll have to do better than that to suborn one of us," She smirked, "Itachi-san may have listened to you at one point, but we've gotten to him as well. Give us another point to shoot down and show you how your failure rate is climbing."

She was entirely too convinced of her power over him. He couldn't allow that to happen.

He wanted to boast about his dealings with Orochimaru through his little genin spy, but the moment his minds turns to Kabuto, he recalled that the boy was missing, had been for several weeks. His eyes widened without conscious thought and he realized that these three ninja were far more intelligent and connected that he had given them credit for.

"So, where did you stash Kabuto-kun?" He murmured his question and the Uchiha grinned with a dark glint in his eyes.

"We didn't 'stash' him anywhere," He commented lightly, mockingly, "We heard that the poor genin went missing not long after he'd graduated. We spent some time looking for him ourselves, but our search seems to have fallen to the wayside, what with the T&I field mission that we were put on."

Haruno pouted and her head fell slightly to the side, her bangs falling over her face, hiding what Danzo knew was sadistic glee in her eyes, "We were just so traumatized by what we had to do on that mission-- we couldn't keep up our search for the boy. We're so sorry."

Lying wench. Danzo laid his hand on the table slowly, tapping a finger against the wood. "I completely understand. I'm sorry for the trouble that you had on the mission."

"We'll get over it," Uzumaki shrugged, "After all," He sniffed as though fighting back tears. Danzo had to give them props for their excellent acting abilities, "We're ninja now, right?" His eyes glinted under the light and Danzo could almost imagine them turning from blue to red, "We'll have to learn about torture sometime. Ninja have dark lives."

"And some of us," The Uchiha leaned forward, his Mangekyō spinning, "Are the leaves of the tree that bloom under the sun while others are forced to be the roots that grow in the dark."

Yes, these ninja knew exactly what they were and what they were doing. They knew of Ne, they knew of Orochimaru, they knew of him.

And they understood _true_ ninja life.

He would have smiled if he could have. Sitting in front of him was the next Hiruzen, the next Danzo and someone to equal them both and sway the vote from one to the other with cold logic for the better for the villagers of Konoha as well as the individual. A medic, to sway to the side of life with the ability to see who could benefit from their help and who wouldn't.

These were the Sannin as they should have been.

Hanzo had been wrong all those years ago when he and Danzo had spoken. He'd been wrong about keeping power to himself, because that was going to guarantee the fall of the village. After all, no one was immortal.

To train those who would come after was true strength. And these three would be those who came after him.

*****xxXXxx*****


	15. Reflections and Plans

**Title: **Reflections and Plans

**Rating: **M

**Summary:** The team is on a mission by themselves and they finally get around to discussing what they want to do with the unplanned for upset in their plans for the time around.

**Warnings:** Language, some gore

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does.

**Author Note:** I... have no idea what happened with this chapter. XD

*****xxXXxx*****

"We played him like well cared for ninja wire," Naruto brought the subject up as he smirked, replaying the encounter with Danzo in his head, leading his team though the trees.

"We've played everyone that well," Sakura scoffed, "You'd think they'd notice something about us is off. Seriously, most of them have been through one kind of war or another." She skipped over several traps, "It shouldn't be this easy."

"You're forgetting something very important, Sakura," Sasuke unsheathed Shadow Cutter and the team pulled to a halt outside the perimeter of their target.

"Other than the fact that we're children?" Sakura asked, shoving her hands into her gloves and weaving shuriken around her fingers.

"Exactly," Sasuke smirked as he watched his Hokage produce a handful of shadow clones that transformed immediately and ran off to gather information, "Children. We're the top ninja in the village, the best ninja produced in fifty years in the entire Elemental Countries. We're also actually thirty-one, not eight."

Sakura blinked then nodded, "Right. I keep forgetting that most ninja don't live past twenty-six on average. Hell, even the Rookie Nine only lasted until twenty-eight and nine, and they were all above average."

"Right, so not only do we have twenty plus years of experience, we're smarter, faster, and stronger than even the exceptional," Sasuke frowned, "Granted, we still make mistakes, but we're not perfect. No one is."

"Contact in three… two… one…" Naruto counted down and as he voiced: "mark!" the team engaged the enemy. Naruto spun out a spool of garrote wire laced with wind chakra that cut through the enemy with more ease than most shinobi would be comfortable with, but it was just normal for Naruto.

Sasuke jumped from tree to tree with his fists glowing, one hand spinning Shadow Cutter and a Chidori whilst the other carried enough chakra to blast internal organs out of the body. Sasuke had wondered about the tree climbing exercise as soon as he'd seen Naruto try to get up the tree and seeing the bark break and shatter under his feet. He had, in turn, concentrated a fissure of chakra in the base of his palm and used it to hit the enemy. He aimed for the head.

The mess was more than enough for Sakura to learn not to watch him fight.

It was good for assassinations though, as Sasuke had learnt in his first life. Because it was a control exercise it wasn't even noticeable with all the chakra protections surrounding a target so it was easy enough to get close to the target and then slam his palm to the back of the target's head. Or the front of his head. Sometimes the stomach if Sasuke was getting paid to make the target suffer.

Gut wounds were horrendously painful and almost always fatal. He had usually just waited around for a day or two and if the target wasn't dead by then he'd go back in and finish the job.

Not that Tensai was sent on assassinations or even missions paid for by the Yakuza, but they were quickly becoming a favourite for groups of bandits and kidnappers. They were cheaper to hire because they were still registered as chuunin, but they were as effective and efficient as jounin.

It didn't take long for the team to clear out the nest of men that had been plaguing the roads on the boarders between Fire and Wave.

They'd also asked for this two month assignment specifically because it brought them close to Wave. And Zabuza Momochi.

If they managed to come across Gato along their patrols, well, it just meant that they would be able to save Wave a lot of trouble and strife, as well as the family that they'd all come to like when they'd been twelve.

If they happened to come across Momochi or other Mist fugitives? Even better.

Naruto had a list of people from Mist that he wanted to deal with and the former Mizukage was at the top of it. Hell, even the Yondaime Mizukage would do in a pinch. Not that Naruto was planning on killing the jinchuuriki Mizukage, but he'd most definitely be having a talk with Yagura about the danger that was lurking around him. And have Sasuke look into breaking the genjutsu around the jinchuuriki.

No matter how good Sakura was becoming at genjutsu, her forte was medicine. Sasuke was the expert in genjutsu.

Cataloguing the dead gang members with a quick efficiency learnt in war, Sakura stripped the bodies of usable weapons and arranged them neatly in a funeral pile. Naruto gave a brief prayer for their souls and Sasuke doused the bodies in white hot fire, destroying the evidence.

Sakura watched the smoldering ashes with shadowed eyes. "Sometimes," She whispered, "I wonder how we managed to survive when Teams Eight and Ten didn't. Hell, even Team Gai and Team Hot Chick lasted longer than our Rookies."

Naruto rested a gentle hand on Sakura's shoulder, "Team Gai was split up. Neji was ANBU, Tenten took a genin team. Lee stood by Gaara and together they were practically unbeatable."

Grabbing her other shoulder, Sasuke spoke roughly, though his hand was as gentle as Naruto's, "Konohamaru, Udon and Moegi only survived as long as they did because others sacrificed themselves for them." Then Sasuke laughed, his face clearing, "Besides, they were an infiltration team. No one was better than Konohamaru and Udon at being female except Naruto."

Joining in his laughter, Sakura smiled, "True. I don't even know as much as they did about make up or fashion."

Naruto yelped and shook a finger at his friends, "Hey, I only taught them the Sexy! Anything else they learnt, they learnt it from someone else."

"Oh, of course we believe that," Sasuke snarked, his dark eyes twinkling, "It's not like you've told me that 'aquamarine' doesn't go with Uchiha blue!"

As they bickered back and forth, playing and teasing, they both relaxed as the shadows in Sakura's eyes cleared.

Clearing up the rest of the gang's belongings, the team continued their light hearted teasing as they decided what was salvageable and what wasn't. Several of Naruto's shadow clones popped by to return Sakura's shuriken and kunai that had found themselves lodged in various trees during their short assault.

"So," Sakura sat back after sealing away her portion of the 'loot' that they'd found in the gang's lair, "Are you going to contact Konohamaru again?" She asked Naruto idly.

Naruto hummed under his breath, "The boy is what, four, right now?" Sakura nodded, "Nah. He's still got his mom and Asuma is coming home soon from his tour of duty on the Daimyo's guard; Konohamaru will be fine for a few more years."

"Did you ever find out what happened to Sarutobi-sama's other son?" Sasuke asked, curious despite his disdain for Konohamaru. Sasuke had never been very good with sharing and he'd never been pleased with what had looked to him as Konohamaru's intrusion into his familial relationship with Naruto.

"Konohamaru said that his father died just after he was born, so we missed out chance to save him by about a year and a half," Naruto scratched his jaw absently, "His mom doesn't date much either."

Sakura arched one eyebrow, "And just how would you know that?"

Refusing to be embarrassed, Naruto shrugged, "I may not have introduced myself, but I've been keeping an eye on Konohamaru since we got back."

"I see," The medic grinned, hiding her smile behind a hand, "Anyone else you've been keeping an eye on?" She looked over to Sasuke, "Or maybe you're keeping an eye on someone?"

"Not particularly," Sasuke drawled out with a smirk in Sakura's direction, "Other than Itachi and Shisui, obviously."

"Yeah, hey," Naruto cocked his head to the side, his cheeks expanding like a chipmunk's as he held his breath for a moment, "What's up with that anyway? I mean, Shisui's not a bad sort, that I can tell anyway."

Sasuke didn't look at Naruto, "Itachi killed him to gain his Mangekyō."

Naruto frowned, "Yeah. And you killed Karin because you said Orochimaru didn't count as he was first overcome by your will and then sealed away by Itachi, never actually killed."

Sasuke glared at Naruto, "It is inconceivable to me how you became Hokage with how utterly dense you are. Naruto," Sasuke spoke in a forced calm, "How does an Uchiha gain Mangekyō?"

Naruto furrowed his brow, not sure where Sasuke was going with his question, "By killing a lover."

"Which means Itachi and Shisui-" Sasuke trailed off and Naruto jumped in.

"-were lovers." He still sounded oblivious to the connection.

"Itachi is thirteen right now. In five months he was going to kill the Uchiha with his Mangekyō." Sasuke tried again to make his commander understand how serious the situation was.

"Yeah." Naruto shrugged, "And?"

"How old is Shisui?" Sasuke ground out bitterly.

Naruto paused then his face twisted when he remembered that Shisui had turned nineteen before the team had left on their mission, "I'm'a kill the fucker," he growled, his speech patterns reverting, "He's a damn paed."

Sasuke nodded, "Exactly."

"Not to be the kill-joy of the 'kill Shisui' party going on, but did you actually think this through, Sasuke?" Sakura asked, raising an eyebrow. "I mean, not that I want to accuse a thirteen year old of anything like this, but Itachi knew that he needed the Mangekyō to kill the Uchiha clan, right?"

"Yes," Sasuke looked at her with a bit of confusion in his dark eyes. He didn't know why she was poking at this topic from any side other than his.

"So then, Itachi knew that he'd have to have sex and kill his lover, right?"

"Yes," He drawled. He didn't particularly like where she was going her line of thought.

The boys watched her as she bit her lip and rested her chin on her fist, "Have you thought that maybe Itachi was the one to seduce Shisui?"

"Itachi is thirteen," Sasuke spat, "He..." Sasuke's words petered out and he closed his eyes in mental anguish.

He didn't want to admit it, but Sakura just might have been right.

"So," He finally asked, "How do we make sure that it doesn't happen?"

"Part one of the plan would be to endear your clan to the village, which for the most part happened already. Part two would be getting Danzo on our side and collecting all the intelligence possible from his files," Sakura smirked, "Again, already completed. Third part would be to make the Hokage aware of one of the more dirty options that Danzo was planning."

"Okay," Naruto stood and stretched, "So I'll go see Sarutobi-ji-san when we get back from this mission and give him the low down. Anything else we need to do?"

Sakura shook her head, "After that it's just watching Itachi - because we know that he's able and surprisingly willing - and the other Uchiha's that seem able to turn on their family."

"Hn." Sasuke snorted and turned away, picking at the blood under his fingernails, "Itachi and I are the only two that are willing to go to our Hokage instead of standing with the family. Fugaku and Jiro are at the head of the family and the elders are still far too involved with plots, even if they have lessened."

"Question," Naruto idly raised his hand, "What about Madara? I mean, we planned for something completely different and now we really don't have a new plan for Madara, what with Fugaku taking the first steps to re-inaugurate into the village, yeah?"

"We could kill him," Sakura offered up and Naruto frowned.

"Seriously? That's it? That's the plan? Kill him?" He shook his head, "I was thinking that we'd, I don't know, provide proof of his involvement with trying to crush Konoha with the Kyuubi and then bring the Akatsuki to light and-"

Sasuke cut his leader off, "Naruto, if he's dead, we don't have to worry about him. Dead and having loose ends to deal with is better than racing around with our heads up our asses."

Naruto pouted, "Okay, yeah. And Pein and Konan?"

"Tell Jiraiya were they are, let him take Danzo's head to them in the next few years. They should be able to deal with it from there." Sakura piped up, cutting Sasuke off. She knew that Nagato and Konan were friends of Naruto and knew that he didn't want to kill them.

"Sasori?" Naruto raised an eyebrow and looked at Sasuke pointedly.

"Naruto-" Sasuke took a deep breath. He didn't know why he was the one that got the idiotic Hokage, "Sasori and Orochimaru are going to be fighting tooth and nail to become the 'first' immortal shinobi. As long as they don't mess with Konoha or Suna, do we care?"

Naruto grabbed Sasuke by the collar and pulled him face to face, their noses so close they were almost touching, "I am not about to let that bastard get you again. If there's one person I actively want dead, it's Orochimaru. He took you from this team, he took Sarutobi-ji-san, he almost took 'Baa-chan and then he fucking resurrected from the dead through Kabuto. I don't want him on this plane of existence ever again." Naruto let Sasuke go and reached out to straighten his top commander's shirt, "I'm just glad that we already got rid of Kabuto." Naruto sighed and bit his lip, "I don't want to see him ever use the Impure Resurrection jutsu again. Fighting Madara was more than enough. Dying to the Impure Resurrected Rikudo Sennin was too much."

Sakura stood up and wrapped Naruto in her arms, "You didn't die."

"It was close enough to make the Kyuubi give up the time travel handseals." Naruto muttered into her shoulder, "He didn't want to die either and with the Sennin holding me down for the extraction, he knew that if he was separated from me, both of us would die. It's impossible to circumvent a seal of the Shinigami."

Sakura brushed her hand over Naruto's hair and murmured to him, telling him about how glad she was that they had been able to get him away from the Sennin before he'd been able to use the Kyuubi given jutsu, about how glad she was that they had been able to come with him into the past.

Sasuke watched his two friends, he only real friends, thinking about how they would continue changing their well thought out plans. He supposed that it had been stupid to think that they would be able to stick to their original plan once they started. Everyone knew that plans only lasted for the first two or three exchanges in an engagement so it wasn't a surprise to find that they had to rethink how they were going to handle the rest of their childhood.

"The Zombie twins will just leave the Akatsuki is the leader is dead, right? Kukazu is only in it for the money, and his life because Madara threatened him; and Hidan is only in it to get easier access to people to kill. If Madara is dead, they leave. Same with Kisame, I would think," Sasuke mused out loud.

"What about the guy that Kakashi-sensei sucked up with his Mangekyō?" Sakura asked, letting her Hokage go and looking over to Sasuke.

Naruto grinned with a hint of fang, drawing Sakura's attention back to him, "Deidara was pushed into joining after Itachi joined. So," He drawled out, his eyes sparkling, "If we just happen to make a stop out by Iwa in the next year or so and get a hold of him before Madara can send someone else, who's to say that he won't join up with Konoha? After all, he did steal forbidden jutsu from Iwa. I'm sure that the Council would welcome a nuke-nin from Iwa into the T&I department for a 'debriefing' and then let him join a team. He's gonna hate Iwa as much as the rest of Konoha soon enough."

"We can cross that bridge when we get to it," Sasuke commented, stretching out and heading to a tree.

The bodies were ash and dust in the wind and their objective had been met. They'd spent more time than they should have in one place, talking about things that they shouldn't have been talking about with fully securing the area with Naruto's seals.

It was time to move on.

Their two months was almost up anyway.

Naruto was still lamenting that he hadn't gotten around to visiting the Mizukage or finding Momochi and Haku.

He'd really wanted to see how he would stand up to the man now that he was a 'real' shinobi, now that he had experience and a blood trailed of over twenty years behind him.

As they ran through the trees back to the base they were stationed, Sakura frowned and with a sudden flash of gut instinct, stopped, crouching low to the trunk of the tree she was on. The boy's noticed immediately that she was no longer following and did an about-face, jumping down beside her.

"What do you sense?" Sasuke hissed.

Sakura wasn't as good as Karin had been at chakra sensing, but she was better than either of the boys.

"Mist nin," She murmured quietly. Naruto brightened considerably and then his hopes were dashed when she continued, "Unknown, four signatures."

"Damn. Not Momochi or Haku."

"No." She shook her head.

"Maybe hunters?" Naruto queried and she shook her head again.

"Two chuunin level chakra signatures and two jounin."

"Fight or flight?" Sasuke asked out of the corner of his mouth as he scanned the area with his blood red Mangekyō.

Naruto's lips twitched, "Chakra levels?" He asked of his team and Sakura shrugged, indicating that she was ready and waiting. Sasuke grimaced and Naruto shook his head. "If Sasuke isn't good to go, I don't want us engaging more enemy. Damn it," He looked over to Sasuke, "You used too many chidori."

"Well I'm sorry that I'm so enthusiastic with completing my missions." Sasuke snarked, pissed and tired and having had almost enough of whatever it was that was grating on his nerves.

"You said that you served me, Sasuke Uchiha, not Konoha," Naruto snapped back quietly, "I wasn't the one that gave out this mission."

"Shut up!" Sakura hissed at them and gestured to the west, "They're headed this way."

"Alright, double-time it back to base. If they follow us all the way, we'll see if they're an envoy from the Mizukage or a mission based team," Naruto grasped the dark tree bark under his hands and moved into position to push off, "If they're a mission based team we'll have backup at the base."

He wasn't about to lose his team.

He was sure that Tensai would be able to defeat the Mist nin, but he didn't want his friends hurt anymore than they already were. It wasn't something that he ever wanted.

Sasuke hissed through his teeth, but followed after Sakura, keeping the medic in the middle of his Hokage and himself. He didn't want his team injured either, but it still vexed him that he was running from a potential enemy.

*****xxXXxx*****


	16. Defenestrated and Falling

**Title: **Defenestrated and Falling

**Rating: **M

**Summary: **Coming across Mist nin wasn't a part of the plan, but then again, almost all of their plans have been defenestrated already.

**Warnings:**Fighting, _**strong **_language, blood, PLOT :)

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does.

**Author Note:** This one came out a little faster. I think it was because I hadn't originally planned for Tensai to be followed so I, myself, was curious to know who had come into Fire Countries borders LOL Then I had an idea and laughed myself off my chair :D Lots of swearing and some dirty lines. Sorry, but the chapter _is_ from the POV of a male jounin in his early twenties. Obviously he's going to be a bit more crass than anyone else that I've written a POV from. I was going to up the rating, but then changed it back because there's no sex (and someone kindly reminded me of that :)

*****xxXXxx*****

"Halt. State your purposes for entering Hi no Kuni!" Kenshin Sato called out to the group that followed after Team Tensai. Kenshin had been wary of the team made up of children, but after a month and a half of them hanging around his base and after having watched the girl child heal some impressive wounds and the Uchiha train fanatically whilst the blond Container ruled with a heavy hand at the poker table, he was more inclined to trust them than he had been when he'd heard of the so called 'Team Tensai'.

A young man who looked to be around the age thirteen or fourteen with soft violet hair and pale eyes stepped out of the trees and Kenshin only barely heard the Uchiha draw in a startled breath.

Team Tensai may have been chuunin, but they were also still children with hormones that they weren't familiar with that wreaked havoc on their ability to stay calm and in control of themselves.

They'd never gone over the edge in his sight, but he kept a close eye on them just in case one of them happened to break at a critical moment.

"Mangetsu Hozuki, chuunin of Kirigakure. We are combing the area for Zabuza Momochi, nuke-nin of Kirigakure," Hozuki bowed his head to Kenshin in acknowledgement.

Kenshin jumped down from the wall and stood in front of wall, "Kenshin Sato. I've been patrolling this area for six months." He raised an eyebrow at Hozuki, "I haven't seen any signs of Momochi around here."

Hozuki was controlled enough that he didn't show his derision of Kenshin's statement in his face, but his body language needed some work before it would fool a jounin as good as Kenshin, "You wouldn't have. He isn't called the Demon of the Mist without reason."

"And I'm not a jounin without reason," Kenshin cocked his head to the side and smirked lightly at Hozuki, "How long did you want access to this area of Hi no Kuni, Hozuki-san?"

"No more than a week," Hozuki stated, seemingly calm. It was hard to be calm in the face of a potential enemy's base with more than twice the nin your own team had, Kenshin knew that from personal experience.

Kenshin inwardly scoffed at the boy. A week in a forest and a single Konoha jounin - or even chuunin - could search it up one side and down the other at least twice.

Hell, even a child chuunin would be able to search this area in two days.

Huh. That was an idea.

"Please, allow me to give you additional aid in your hunt," Kenshin smirked darkly, "I would like to attach a three man team to help you scour the area and guide you."

Hozuki's face flashed through several micro expressions from angered to insulted. He'd have to work on that if the boy planned on advancing to jounin. Finally his face seemed to settle on one expression and he nodded briefly. "Thank you for your willingness to help, but our team will be fine."

"It wasn't an offer," Kenshin stated mildly. As mildly as a jounin giving an order, that is.

Hozuki flushed and Kenshin let his inside voice laugh at the boy. Even his child chuunin had better control than this Mist nin. It was kind of hilarious that this boy was on the Mist team that was hunting the Demon of the Mist.

A tall red head woman slipped out of the forest and Kenshin knew that she was the one that was in charge of the mission. "Mei Terumi," She introduced herself with a smile that tilted her lips up, "Thank you for your offer, Sato-san, we appreciate the help you are willing to give us."

Her voice was soft and comfortable, though at the same time hard and unyielding. This was a woman who would go far, if she lived long enough.

"Tensai!" Kenshin called out, an order in his voice to come out from behind the walls. He knew that they'd just gotten back from their mission only minutes before the Mist team had shown up, but they were the ones that he wanted going with this team. Two jounin, two chuunin and Tensai.

He was most sure that Tensai could handle the entire Mist team, should it come to that, and given how good Tensai was at teamwork with strange teams, he was sure that they could work well with the Mist team.

The Container was the first one down the wall, followed by Haruno and then the Uchiha. The order that they came out was pretty much the only order that he'd ever seen them move in, the Container as the heavy hitter, the medic in the middle and the Uchiha as support and watching the team's six.

He wasn't surprised that the two ordinary - although that wasn't the correct term, he couldn't think of another word for them as compared to Uzumaki - chuunin didn't let the Container at their back.

There had been more than one story about Containers going crazy and killing everything in sight. He supposed that it was good planning on Haruno and the Uchiha's parts that they weren't in Uzumaki's line of sight.

The woman's eyes didn't widen in surprise, nor was there a single micro expression on her face. She was a very good jounin but he could still see the flash of emotion in her body language. He could sense that she was strong enough that she didn't have to hide every single detail.

There were very few shinobi good enough that they didn't _have_ to hide their emotions: Kakashi Hatake, Gai Maito and the Sandaime were fine examples of Konoha nin who held that privilege.

Perhaps she was in training for Mizukage, like the Hatake was.

But it didn't do to dwell on that sort of thing. It wasn't his place.

"Naruto Uzumaki, Sakura Haruno, and Sasuke Uchiha will go with you."

Hozuki sneered. Blatantly. Kenshin had to wonder what he was doing on a hunt. Maybe he was in training; that was a possibility. Pretty much the only thing he could think of.

"Children?" He asked with distain.

"Chuunin," The Uchiha drawled out, looking him up and down, an unimpressed expression on his usually blank face, "A few _years_ ago; the Suna exam."

Pale eyes widened and Hozuki's mouth dropped open, "The one where the Kazekage ordered his son to kill-" His words trailed off as he spoke, staring at the three children, "-a team of three children from Konohagakure..."

The Haruno smiled brightly at the teenager, "Yep, that's the one."

Exchanging looks with the leader of the Mist team, Kenshin shrugged absently, "They know this part of the woods like the back of their hands."

"Hey look!" Uzumaki raised his hand up suddenly, "I found a freckle on the back of my hand that I didn't know I had!"

Kenshin sighed. It didn't seem to matter how long Uzumaki had been around, Kenshin still continuously forgot how good his hearing was and how he liked to play to the crowd. Apparently it didn't matter whether the crowd was comprised of comrades or tentative allies.

"Okay, go on; get," Kenshin waved Terumi, Hozuki, and Tensai off in an indolent manner. Uzumaki waved back whilst the rest of the shinobi just vanished into the trees.

It was four hours later when Kenshin heard screaming and cursing and felt a wave of released chakra and killing intent. It seemed like everything had suddenly gone to hell as he raced across the parapets, weaving kunai through his fingers on one hand and the other hand forming a half seal.

Blood splattered across his face as he turned the corner at a sprint and he forged through it, refusing to flinch as he saw the crushed torso of his long term shinobi partner. He wrenched his gaze from the morbid scene and focused on the retreating two teams, the Mist team and Tensai.

It was startling that they'd retreated all the way to the base, but understandable when it was the most defensible place.

Senbon littered the ground and a small figure Flickered from spot to spot, never staying in one place for more than a second. He couldn't get a solid location on the shinobi that was flinging the senbon and had to settle for dodging the deadly aimed weapons.

"You little fuck!" Hozuki screamed at one of Tensai and Kenshin forced himself to ignore it, bringing his chakra to the forefront and releasing it in a wave of earth, forcing a barrier to form for protection from the Flickering nin.

"Shut the fuck up!" Uzumaki screamed back, racing along the wall of the base, his fingers in a strange seal and releasing wave after wave of shadow clones that ran off into the trees. "If you hadn't of fucked starting talking, this wouldn't have- FUCK!" He stopped dead and looked to the trees where most of his clones had fled to, "You bastard!"

"Naruto!" The Uchiha appeared beside Kenshin and paused to breathe out a burst of fire at the nin who was still throwing senbon, "What happened?"

"Nuke-nin!" Naruto yelled back, "The other jounin and chuunin! They fucking switched sides and they have poison!"

"They joined Momochi-san," Haruno murmured to Kenshin, bent over his partner, her hands glowing green with chakra.

Kenshin didn't know what she thought she could do for Renji, he had to be dead with his ribs caved in like that; "Sakura, leave him, he's dead."

She looked over her shoulder at him and snarled, "Dead, my ass!" She turned back to Renji and the green around her hands intensifying. He had to look away when the Uchiha grunted from beside him and he saw that there were several senbon scattered over his left shoulder. His fingers strained as he folded them into a complicated seal and released his chakra to move the earthen wall.

As the wall of heavily packed dirt moved, Kenshin jumped to the top of it and started littering the senbon covered ground with shuriken.

There was a splatter of blood and then the Flickering nin vanished from where he was. He must have gotten the bastard.

"Kenshin-san," The Uchiha murmured, "Momochi has an apprentice."

"Shit." Kenshin jumped back down to the Uchiha, "So it's not only Momochi, a jounin and a chuunin; but there's one _more_?"

"Yes."

"Information?" He asked, looking over the field of battle. Uzumaki was standing on the wall and had been joined by Ryuga, another Konoha chuunin, and a Konoha jounin by the name of Natsumi. They had fended off the traitorous chuunin and jounin from the Mist team. Terumi and Hozuki were a little further down the wall, the ground around them covered in water and lava and some brush was smoldering, threatening to turn into a full grown bush fire.

Uzumaki looked over to him and he gestured for the boy to contain the fire.

"Chuunin level, specializing in senbon and ice," The Uchiha reported, "Our combined teams found Momochi and his apprentice within two hours and Uzumaki started a line of communication with them." Kenshin blinked back his shock. Establishing communication was one of the several steps in capturing nuke-nin that most shinobi ignored over because it _never_ worked. For Uzumaki to have actually managed to gotten that step to work was practically a miracle.

A gasp from behind him made Kenshin spin, crouched low to the ground, fingers filled with kunai.

This time he couldn't contain his shock because Renji was sitting up, panting for air, blood covering his chest and the pink haired girl kneeling beside him.

"Lay back down, Renji-san," Sakura grasped his shoulder and gently guided the man back to the ground, "I am not finished healing you yet." She brushed moss green hair out of her way and stared intently at the laceration that was bleeding sluggishly.

"Renji?" Kenshin stumbled over to his best friend and collapsed to his knees, bending over the man. Renji looked up at him with pain in his eyes, but raised a shaky hand. Kenshin grabbed hold of it and tried to smile, "I thought you were dead."

"Never-" Renji gasped out, "-leave a team mate behind..."

The Uchiha looked over his shoulder at Renji's bloody chest and absently sniffed in his haughty Uchiha way, "Sakura does good work."

Kenshin had to chuckle. Making sure that Renji was still awake, he took a deep breath, "What happened after Uzumaki opened the line of communication?"

"Momochi and Naruto spoke for about an hour or so and then Hozuki said something completely stupid and out of turn and Momochi backed off. Hiroshi Aomori and Kazuki Miyagi took that moment to flee the group and join with Momochi." This wasn't the first time that Kenshin had despaired of the Uchiha ever using suffixes, he thought randomly.

"What did Hozuki say?" Kenshin asked wary. He didn't think that he really wanted to know what the boy had said, but he needed to know so that he could make an accurate report.

"He indicated that when we captured Momochi, there would be no trial and he would be promptly executed upon his return to Kirikagure."

Blinking, Kenshin slowly turned his head to face Terumi and Hozuki who neared them, closing nonexistent gaps in their line of defense, "You complete and utter dipshit."

"Hey!" Hozuki exclaimed and Terumi slapped him upside the back of the head with a smile on her face.

"He's right. Shut up." Kenshin saw a glisten of red on the hand that Terumi pulled back.

Sakura saw it as well and stood up, blinking slowly through her weariness. Healing Renji must have taken a lot of chakra from her. "Come over here," She commanded him and the older boy went without question. Maybe he had learned not to fuck with medics. Sakura told him to sit and he sneered at her.

Maybe he hadn't learned.

"Sit the hell down," The Uchiha's fingers glowed bright white and he poked Hozuki in the back of the knees. Hozuki fell with a yelp and a glare at the Uchiha.

"That fucking hurt!"

"I imagine that it did. Now shut up and let Sakura heal you." The Uchiha turned away and sent to stand beside Uzumaki.

Kenshin followed him as he left then let his gaze wander back to Terumi, "Why would Aomori and Miyagi defect?"

She shrugged, "Couldn't say."

But she didn't say that she didn't know. Kenshin had to wonder how bad it was in Kirigakure that the village's shinobi were leaving left, right, and center.

"Do you think that Momochi will return?"

"We're going back out once Haruno-san finishes healing Mangetsu-kun," Terumi stated. Kenshin thought that she was one tenacious bitch.

"No," Sakura piped up, "You're not."

"Excuse me?" Terumi looked over her shoulder at the eight year old medic with a hard glint in her eyes even as she continued smiling. Kenshin found it more than a little creepy that she'd never lost her smile the entire time she'd been fighting.

"Mangetsu-san had a hemorrhage in his brain. The only reason that he made it back here was because it was slowly being bled out from the laceration that he received in the battle." Sakura paused and panted for a moment before straightening up, "I've cleaned out the old blood and stopped the bleeding, as well as patched up the outside of his skull, but his body needs to heal for at least a day. I'm surprised that he managed to get through the battle without falling over."

"Listen, Little girl," Terumi tilted her chin, her bangs falling around her face in a particular manner, hiding one of her green eyes, "We are hunting the Demon of the Mist. I don't intend on failing this mission."

"You will fail," Sakura rebutted candidly, "-if you force Mangetsu-san to continue fighting today. You are not strong enough to take on Momochi-san, his apprentice, Aomori-san, and Miyagi-san by yourself. That's two jounin and two chuunin. Momochi-san himself is hovering around the level of Kakashi Hatake and I'm talking about _Sharingan no Kakashi_, not some random jounin." She glanced at Kenshin, "No offence intended, Kenshin-san."

Kenshin waved the unintended insult off, "None taken, Sakura-chan."

A heavy feeling filled the air and Terumi just _looked_ at Sakura, "I am _not_ failing this mission."

"Yes, you are. Even if Mangetsu-san recovers back to full health and you go after Momochi-san with the boy, you will still fail."

"I am not a wilting flower or a powerless kunoichi, Haruno-san," Terumi said with a wider grin even as the killing intent started to fade, "I am a powerhouse of a shinobi and I can take Momochi on."

"I don't care," Sakura shrugged, "I don't care how strong you are or how strong you _think_ you are," She reiterated, "Momochi-san would tire you out; his apprentice has a Bloodline Limit, which would whittle away even more of your strength, possibly allowing him to kill you if you couldn't escape his ice. If you survived the boy, the others, the _Demon Brothers_," She stressed Aomori and Miyagi's new nickname in a strange way that Kenshin didn't really understand, "-would then be able to finish you off."

Terumi sighed deeply and with a graceful smile, nodded, "You have a very good sense of strategy, Haruno-san. Something that Momochi does not have."

"I'm sure that he's learned a thing or two in the last couple of years while being a nuke-nin. Learning is the only way to survive, after all," Sakura didn't smirk, but Kenshin could tell that she wanted to.

"Alright, if what you say is true, what do you think that I should do, Haruno-san?" Terumi's question was not facetious.

"Retreat. Regroup. Perhaps come back with a larger - and more loyal - hunting team." She looked over to where Hozuki was laying on the ground, breathing deep enough to indicated unconsciousness, "A team with a child on it, no matter his interest in the swords of the Seven Swordsman, is not a team that I, or Naruto, would bet on."

Considering Uzumaki's luck at gambling, that was saying something. Kenshin didn't even want to know how Sakura knew some of Hozuki's personal goals; he didn't doubt that she knew what she was talking about when she said that the boy had a hard-on for the swords of the Seven Swordsman.

Uzumaki trotted up to Kenshin and tugged lightly on his forest green vest, pointing towards the forest, "Clones are being destroyed by the _Demon Brothers_ to the west of here. Also," His arm swung clockwise towards North, "-to the north is the apprentice. I think his name is Haku, but they didn't get close enough to make a confirmation of the apprentice's name."

"We'll call him that," Kenshin muttered, "Easier than saying 'the apprentice' all the time."

"We'll only need to talk about him until he's dead," Terumi smiled in a grim way, "And then we won't need to talk about him again."

Kenshin smiled back with the same grimness. She wasn't lying and he had no plans of letting Momochi or _Haku_ get away alive.

There was a near silent poof of air and the Uchiha Flickered in next to him.

"Where were you?" He asked the brunet boy and the Uchiha's eyes darkened.

"Checking out the west point; Naruto said that Haku was there."

"What did you find?" He didn't question the Uchiha on how he knew the apprentice's name. Obviously one of Uzumaki's clones told him what they'd found out.

He wondered if any of Tensai was ready to kill someone near their own age while knowing their name. He couldn't remember - couldn't_ think_ with all the suddenness of the attack - if Tensai had killed people who they could, possibly, relate to.

He could only hope that they didn't relate to the boy out there in the forest with Momochi. Haku was dangerous, both with his senbon and having a Bloodline Limit. He didn't want Tensai to hesitate and get injured. Not only would it make him feel guilty, but Sharingan no Kakashi would _kill_ him.

An explosion from the north startled all of them, though none of them showed it. Terumi and the Uchiha headed immediately towards the origin of the blast while Kenshin followed Uzumaki westward. Sakura stayed behind, raising a wall around her two patients and herself.

Haku, who was probably younger than Hozuki was, stood at the edge of the tree line, a small white and red mask over his face; he wore a set of armor that had been cobbled together from defeated enemies. Kenshin readied himself only for Uzumaki to raise a hand and gesture for him to stand down, but stand ready.

Throwing a curious look over to the eldest of Tensai, Kenshin wondered what other miracle the boy could work and did as he had commanded. The fact that he'd followed a subordinate's command hit him like a ton of bricks a moment later, but he didn't dare interrupt as Uzumaki had already started talking.

"Haku-kun," Uzumaki stepped quietly through the underbrush to stand somewhere in the middle between Kenshin and the other boy as he spoke slowly, "You know that even with your new partners, Momochi-san won't win. If you surrender and return to Kirigakure with the team sent to find you, there would be leniency given to you. You are not the one they are hunting."

Haku didn't speak, but Kenshin could see his body shudder. Haku was afraid and he didn't have the experience to hide it from either Konoha nin he was facing.

Uzumaki moved to step closer to Haku and Kenshin cursed the kid out in his head. You never got close to an unstable nuke-nin. It just wasn't done.

"I am a tool for Zabuza-sama," Haku finally intoned, "If what he requires from me is death, then my death he will have."

"Haku, people are not tools. Not even people with Bloodline Limits. I have a team mate, actually, who has a Bloodline Limit. He's treated almost like royalty in Konoha."

Apparently Uzumaki was well versed in inter-village politics to know that Mist nin were not kind to Bloodline clans. Kenshin wondered how Uzumaki was going to get through to Haku with that direction of conversation. Kenshin had seen more than one ninja bent on the idea that ninja were just tools to be used and he'd seen this type of brainwashing before. There could be no good end to this.

Haku shook his head and Kenshin was about to reach out and pull Uzumaki back when the masked ninja stepped backwards, his body language defensive. Kenshin was amazed to see that the boy was actually considering Uzumaki's words.

"Then he is lucky." He finally responded.

It was the last thing the boy ever said.

Uzumaki looked shocked at the hand that was protruding from Haku's chest, covered with blood and chirping as loud as a thousand birds.

"Sasuke-" He breathed out, face blanching.

Kenshin looked around and saw Terumi holding a hunting scroll. The kind that contained the heads of missing nin.

He was shocked that it had ended so quickly.

"I won't allow him to hurt you," The Uchiha grunted and pulled his fist from Haku's chest, letting the body fall. "At least I saved him from knowing that the state of Momochi's life did not hinge on his ability to be a useful tool. He only ever wanted to be a tool, and he-" Whatever it was that he was going to say was halted when Uzumaki drew back his hand and slapped him across the face.

It wasn't a hard slap, it barely left a mark, but the look on the Uchiha's face was one of anguish.

"-Naruto?"

"You killed Haku. You didn't even give me a chance to try and turn him."

Kenshin watched the drama unfold. He felt a little uncomfortable and fairly awkward. Terumi touched his elbow and jerked her head towards the base. Kenshin took her out with a silent sigh of relief. Whatever it was that the Uchiha and Uzumaki were going to be talking about, he was glad that he wasn't going to have to listen to it.

"Kenshin-san? Mei-san?" Sakura frowned, "What happened?"

Terumi shrugged her shoulders and smiled at Sakura kindly, "You may have been right about the Demon of the Mist and his cohorts being able to kill me while I was alone or with Mangetsu, but I only had to take on Momochi, and I had help." Her smile turned nasty, "Momochi was no match _at all_ for me and a Sharingan wielder."

A shaking hand went up and covered Sakura's mouth, "You and Sasuke- Momochi-san is dead? I thought you were taking him back to Kirigakure alive-"

Kenshin felt for the girl, he really did, but he was too happy that the immediate threat had been neutralized to really empathize with the eight year old girl. "I'm sorry, Sakura-chan."

"-and Haku-san?" She asked in a trembling voice and Kenshin nodded in the direction that Terumi and he had just come from.

"Sasuke-san killed him."

Sakura gave him one devastated look before lunging in the direction of her team mates, tears already on her face.

Kenshin didn't want to know, he didn't want to hear, and he didn't want to care.

Unfortunately for him, it didn't seem to matter what he wanted.

"I'm a tool as well!" The Uchiha's voice rose up followed quickly by Uzumaki's.

"No, you aren't! You're my friend!" Uzumaki sounded both indignant and afraid. Kenshin had stop himself from wondering why the Container would be indignant. Then again, the Uchiha was confessing to believing that he was a tool that could be used and thrown to the side.

"I'm _your_ tool, Naruto! I always will be!"

"Fine!" Uzumaki snapped, "If you understood Haku so well, why'd you kill him?"

"Because I'd rather die than know that I failed you-"

"Shut up! Shut up, both of you!" Sakura screamed at them and Kenshin glanced out of the corner of his eye at Terumi. The children's voices lowered again and Kenshin could hear murmurs, but not the actual words without boosting his hearing with chakra. Which he wasn't about to do. He didn't care to hear a team as close as Tensai was, arguing. What he'd heard of the conversation was worrying enough already; children shouldn't consider themselves expendable.

Terumi just smiled at him, the smile that had never left her face in the first place.

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	17. Four Month Wait

**Title: **Four Month Wait

**Rating: **G

**Summary: **Kakashi knew that something was wrong, he just didn't expect to find out about other secrets too.

**Warnings:** None.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does.

**Author Note:** I know that a lot of you have been waiting for another chapter, and I promise that I haven't given up on this. As most of you saw, I finished my Naruto Big Bang, so I'm back to everything else now :) And a thank you to everyone that is still into this fic and everyone that reviews, you seriously make my day :D

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There was something seriously wrong with his team, Kakashi thought as he watched them during a team exercise that he'd randomly decided to assign.

Well. The exercise wasn't really as random as his team thought it was.

Kakashi had heard of what had happened in the outskirts of the country. He'd heard Kenshin Sato's report and he'd talked to the man privately after he was released from the mission's office.

There wasn't really anything he could do to help though, although whatever was wrong between his team members had affected even Sakura, and none of them wanted to talk to him about it.

To his amazement though, the team exercise went off without a hitch and he had to wonder at how, even though Tensai wasn't talking to each other, they still managed to complete their tasks with minimal fuss and no obvious problems.

He guessed that he was actually going to have to get involved instead of just hoping that they would get over whatever it was that was bothering them, because it had been over a month since they'd gotten home from their Border Patrol and they still weren't talking. Well, there were words between them, but nothing of sustenance, nothing personal.

"Kakashi-sensei?" Iruka tapped his shoulder, "May I have a word with you?"

Curious to know what Iruka knew about the situation, the Copy-Nin nodded, "Let me dismiss the team and we'll go for ramen."

Iruka laughed and shook his head, "No thanks, Naruto's been eating ramen every single day and I'm almost ready to ban it from the house."

"Okay," Kakashi's eye curved upwards as he smiled. His smile wasn't a nice one because he knew that as much as Naruto liked to eat ramen, he usually only had four to six meals out of each week made up of the noodles. Ramen was Naruto's comfort food so if he was eating it for lunch and supper every day, something was seriously wrong. "You pick then," Kakashi offered, seemingly absently. He left the chuunin to choose what he wanted as he went to each member of his team individually and dismissed them, giving a few words of encouragement to Sakura, praise to Naruto, and fortitude to Sasuke.

He met up with Iruka at the edge of the training field and waited patiently for the chuunin to notice him. Iruka may only have been a chuunin, but as he was a teacher and had been a teacher for a few years now, he had a higher situational awareness than most chuunin.

"So I was thinking either takoyaki or Bontan Ame," Iruka started walking towards one of the smaller food districts in Konoha and Kakashi fell into step with him.

"I'd rather takoyaki, really," Kakashi said thoughtfully. He wasn't in the mood for the semisweet treat that was Iruka's alternative.

"Rongusera?" Iruka asked, leading the way to a small, out of the way, street vendor hawking his octopus dumplings to passers-by. Kakashi was pleased. Rongusera had been selling takoyaki since he was a small boy and he enjoyed the elaborate takoyaki the man sold.

"Excellent." He stayed silent while Iruka made the order and paid before they jumped to the roof tops with their treats and made their way to a plot of trees close by a rather quiet park.

Iruka settled on the ground at the base of one of the trees and Kakashi took up the watch sprawled in the branches above him.

"So, What did you want to talk to me about, Iruka-san?" He asked idly while munching contently at his takoyaki.

"Naruto," Iruka murmured softly, "He's been withdrawn and moody lately."

"Naruto? Moody?" Not really a shock, given that Kakashi knew the boy was unhappy with his two closest friends, but he had thought that Naruto would try to hide that from his guardian. Naruto wasn't the sort of child that would let others worry about him.

"He's only eating ramen, as I told you before, and he won't really talk to me. I ask him how his day went and he just shrugs at me, tells me it was fine and heads off to his room." Iruka paused before he continued, "Neither Sasuke or Sakura have come over since they got back from their border mission."

"Hmm." Kakashi sniffed and rolled to his side, looking down at the worried parent. "I talked to Sato-san when they came in. He mentioned that there was a fight between them near the end of their mission."

"Did he happen to mention what precipitated the fight?" Iruka asked, looking up with wide eyes. Kakashi shook his head.

Kenshin and Kakashi were jounin. They understood the value of silence on a mission. While Kakashi was sure that Iruka understood the same value, he didn't take it quite as seriously as the elite ninja did. Then again, he wasn't used to knowing sensitive information that had to be carefully guarded. Iruka was a teacher and a missions desk worker. Sure, the chuunin would come across some valuable information, but he mostly handled regular missions, not A or S ranks.

"No, Sato-san didn't say."

Iruka hummed and leaned back against the tree. His brown eyes were murky with emotions and Kakashi could tell that he wanted to ask more questions but knew there would be very few answers for him from the jounin.

Naruto found them five minutes later, a cup of instant ramen in hand, "Iruka? When're you coming home?" He hunched his shoulders and refused to look up from his food. Kakashi watched, a little shocked. He had known that something was wrong with his team, but to see Naruto - _Naruto_ - this despondent was startling.

"I'm on my way, Naruto-kun," Iruka stood and brushed the grass loose from his pants. Kakashi watched them walk away, eyeballing the way that Naruto cuddled into Iruka when his guardian wrapped a sure arm around the boy. Naruto was very physical in his interactions and Kakashi knew what to search for when he was looking for something.

Naruto was afraid. Not of Iruka, but of Iruka _leaving_ him, or becoming distant. He wanted reassurance that his guardian wouldn't leave him. Iruka was doing the best he could to show his charge that he wasn't drawing away from him, but it didn't seem to be working that well.

Kakashi settled on the tree and let his legs swing idly as he watched the comings and goings of the children and their parents in the park.

"Kakashi-san," Itachi's soft voice interrupted his thoughts and he rolled his grey eye up to see the Uchiha standing over him.

"Itachi-kun." Itachi may have been chuunin like Iruka, but the kid felt more like one of his students to Kakashi. He was both surprised and unsurprised that he was in charge of a whole passel of genius children with serious problems. The fact that their families seemed to come with them as part and parcel wasn't a surprise either. (Except for Itachi. The Uchiha still hated him for stealing their sharingan, but Kakashi thought that they were snubbing him mostly because that was the thing to do now-a-days and not because anyone was really mad anymore. He'd more than lived up to the legend of the Sharingan, so they really had nothing to complain about anyway.)

There was a long moment of silence and then Itachi gingerly sat down next to Kakashi. Kakashi raised an eyebrow at the eleven year old boy, but didn't protest. He liked his personal space, but he was still worried about his team and Itachi had an overprotective streak for his brother three miles wide.

"Sasuke-kun is disturbed." Itachi said in a clear, hushed voice. Kakashi nodded. Itachi continued, "He refuses to talk to me. He does not bring his team over. Has not brought his team over since the border mission."

Kakashi nodded again, "I know."

"Do you know what happened between them?" Itachi looked at him with a little bit of anxiety in his black eyes and Kakashi shrugged noncommittally.

"There was an argument," He voiced, "And Sasuke isn't the only one who is having problems."

Itachi licked his lips nervously before closing his eyes. "He is having nightmares." Kakashi blinked at that. He hadn't known that piece of information. "I can hear him cry out in the middle of the night, but he won't confide in me." Itachi turned away, reaching up in a self conscious motion to tuck a short lock of hair behind his ear, "I don't know what he's dreaming about, but... I'm worried."

Kakashi took a deep breath to allow himself some time to think before he finally bit the bullet. "I'll talk to him," He didn't want to get involved in whatever was going on between the members of his team, but it seemed that there really wasn't a choice at this point. If Naruto was eating comfort food 24-7 and Sasuke was having nightmares, it was more serious than he'd thought it was.

"Thank you," Itachi looked relieved and his hand dropped to his lap, smoothing a crease in his pants.

"Sure," Kakashi waved the boy off and after Itachi had flickered away, set about to brood a little bit.

He couldn't approach Sasuke or Naruto first because they would clam up like nervous virgins, but he could talk to Sakura. He didn't think that she was as involved as the other two, only stuck between them and not wanting to show support to one over the other.

With that in mind, Kakashi slipped off the tree branch and landed on the ground before flickering in the direction of his only female teammates house.

Shiori Haruno answered the door to his knock and she smiled widely at him when he sketched a short bow to her, "Hello, Haruno-san."

"Hatake-san!" She opened the door wider and gestured for him to enter, "Please, be welcome!"

"Maa- Haruno-san, is Sakura here?" Shiori nodded and glanced up the stairs.

"Let me get her for you." She paused and cocked her head to the side, "Are you going on a mission, Hatake-san?"

"No, no, nothing like that. There's just some things I need to talk to Sakura-chan about."

She nodded and hurried up the stairs. Sakura doesn't take long to appear at the top of the stairs dressed in a pair of soft green overalls and a beige tee-shirt. Kakashi could see curiosity in her eyes and he gave her his upside down eye smile. She grinned at him and bounced down the steps.

"Kaa-san! I'll be home later, okay?" She called back up and waited for Shiori to acknowledge her words before slipping on her blue ninja sandals and following Kakashi out the front door. The two of them paused on the porch and Kakashi grinned a little wider before he held down a hand to her. Sakura smirked and laughed but took his hand. He swung her up onto his shoulders and she gently grabbed hold of his hair as he tucked her feet under his arms and went roof-top. Sakura laughed loudly as they rushed from roof to roof.

He had thought that she would refuse his invitation, but he was glad that she still thought of having fun even though she was chuunin.

He stopped when he was in the same park he'd talked to Iruka and Itachi in, and she climbed down his body like a monkey, giggling and huffing with laughter. He swung her up into the trees and followed behind her, not to make sure she didn't fall, but to make sure he didn't lose her.

"So," Sakura sat in one of the uppermost branches and dangled her arms down at him. He watched her, knowing that she was going to ask what he wanted. "Finally decided that enough was enough and had to know what's going on?" She raised an eyebrow at him and he shrugged. That was true enough and he didn't have anything to hide from her. "I see." She rolled onto her back and stared up at the sky.

Kakashi waited for her to collect her thoughts. To be in the middle of a conflict is hard enough for an adult so it must be twice as hard for an eight year old when it's her two best friends.

Finally, she speaks. "There was an incident. Someone died that- was an enemy, but wasn't a danger to us."

"Died?" Kakashi murmured and she sighed before nodding.

"Sasuke killed him."

"I see," Kakashi knew that Sasuke had killed before, so it wasn't causing this enemies death that was the problem. It was something deeper.

"He didn't have to die," Sakura murmured again, "Naruto was talking to him, making him stand down." Kakashi wasn't surprised at that. Naruto was a budding little diplomat with amazing talent. He could halt a confrontation in the midst of spilling blood. It had happened before, so Kakashi knew that for a fact.

"And Sasuke-kun killed him?"

"He was standing down," Sakura murmured, "He was standing down and Sasuke didn't even hesitate before killing him. He'd already killed the boy's master-" She took a shaky breath, "I think- I think that he forgot that it wasn't personal."

Kakashi sharpened up at that. _What wasn't personal _? He wanted to ask, but knew that if he did, Sakura would close off. She wasn't really thinking about what she was saying at the moment and he knew that that was the only reason that he was getting this much out of her.

"Of course, Naruto forgot that it wasn't personal either and now they're fighting."

_Silently_? Kakashi thought to himself. Usually fighting between eight year olds involved mud throwing and loud yelling. Two silent boys who avoided more words than necessary wasn't normal.

But then, his team wasn't normal, was it?

Sakura sighed again, "It doesn't help that the event is only four months away. Sasuke's so scared..." Sakura trailed off and then her hands clapped over her mouth loudly and her head snapped around and she stared at him with horrified eyes. "I didn't just say that," She whispered through her fingers and Kakashi stared back.

Whatever it was that she hadn't meant to say sounded ominous. Very ominous.

"Sakura-chan," Kakashi kept his body loose and open and approachable, "What's going to happen in four months?"

"Nothing!" She yelped quietly and then pursed her lips together, refusing to say another word.

"Wouldn't Naruto want to be with Sasuke to help him if he's scared of whatever is happening in four months?" Kakashi asked in a gentle tone. He desperately wanted to know what she knew about this mysterious upcoming event, but couldn't push her because then she would shut herself down so she couldn't answer his questions. He didn't want her going into a self induced fugue to escape his questioning.

Sakura lowered her eyes and bit her lip. "Well... yes," She blinked quickly and Kakashi thought for a moment that he could see tears in her eyes. "But- Sensei, it's not what's happening, it's what's _not_ happening."

A single grey eye studied the little girl and Kakashi knew without a doubt that Sakura didn't want to talk about this at all. Not _at all._ Whatever it was, it was supposed to be secret and private.

"Sakura," Kakashi lowered his voice and reached up, petting her arms, hoping to calm her, "Is whatever that's not supposed to happen- Is it going to hurt Sasuke?"

She looked at him with wide eyes and after a moment, slowly shook her head, "No, Sensei. It's- it's a good thing if it doesn't happen."

The fact that she was calling him Sensei instead of Kaka-sensei was telling. He knew that she was worried about what he was going to do about this information that she didn't want him to have, but he wasn't going to let his kids down. If the event was something _not_ happening and that meaning Sasuke not getting hurt, he was kind of okay with not knowing whatever it was that they didn't want to come to pass.

"Sakura, can you tell me exactly when this is supposed to not happen?" She shivered under his hands and he gently pulled her down and wrapped her in a tight hug.

"September 2nd," She whispered into his vest.

Kakashi rocked her a little, comforting the half distraught girl, "Sakura, would it be alright if I kept watch over Sasuke on the 2nd?" She tensed in his arms and he shushed her, "It's okay, I won't do anything- I just... I want to make sure that Sasuke is alright. Would it be alright if I did that?"

It took a moment - a long moment - but then she nodded into his chest, "Only if Naruto and I can watch with you. We can't tell Sasuke though, he'll never let us keep watch for that day."

Kakashi quietly agreed and mentally made plans to request that day off so he could spend the entire twenty-four hours watching the boy. He wanted to keep Sasuke safe and he wanted his kids to be okay and letting the team keep this secret, but knowing _about_ it even if he didn't _know_ it, would help them. He hadn't expected the conversation to veer off into potential future disasters, but at least he knew a little background to the strain in his team. It wouldn't take much now for him to convince Naruto that he needed to forgive Sasuke for killing the boy even if he didn't like it. It was always easy to manipulate Naruto when it concerned Sasuke.

That would have been dangerous if not for Naruto's ability to see through the manipulations and twist them to suit Sasuke and himself, instead of an outsider looking to take advantage of them.

If Naruto took the first step by forgiving Sasuke, Kakashi was sure that Sasuke would respond in kind, and though the strain in the team probably wouldn't leave completely, Kakashi knew that it would lessen and their team could start healing the rift that had appeared.

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	18. Further Planning

**Title: **Further Planning

**Rating: **PG

**Summary: **It's almost time. They've only got a month left. Sasuke is so not impressed with the fact that Naruto doesn't have a plan yet.

**Warnings:** Fake yuri (one teeny girl/girl kiss). Fake relationship. Girls and Guys switched sexes for cover (and to remind people while reading I used gender tags that fit appearances, not actual genders). Don't like, don't read.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does.

**Author Note:** It took me a very long time to decide some very important things about how the Tensai/Madara confrontation would go down and who's POV I would write from. I'm mostly done the first part of the last chapter and as I started the second part I realized that I ought to give a little background, so this isn't so much filler as it is plotting :D I'm glad to see that people are still reading though, through all my long long periods of _wtf-should-i-do-next_ museless writing blocks. So thank you for continuing to stick around!

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Naruto grumbled, crushed the paper she was drawing on and threw it away without even looking. Sasuke blinked as it hit her between the eyes.

"Watch it," she snarked, staring across the café table at her Hokage. Naruto didn't even notice as she started new scribble on another piece of paper.

Sakura rolled his eyes and brushed his long magenta bangs away form his face. They'd long ago gotten used to meeting like this after coming back, using Naruto's Sexy Technique so that no one would know who they were. Thankfully the technique was still as impenetrable as ever.

"So, we have a plan?" he asked quietly.

"You'll watch over Aniki," Sasuke told him immediately, "You can heal him if he gets hurt."

Sakura raised a thin, aristocratic eyebrow, "Obvious, 'Ke-chan." He sighed, "At least tell me that you and 'To-chan aren't fighting anymore?"

The slender brunette shook her head, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear daintily, "No, we've managed to figure that out."

"Good," Sakura mock scowled, "That was something I thought that you two dealt with years ago. Then you had to go all emotional after killing _him_ and it's taken- what? Three months for you to figure it out? Again?" He stressed the last word and Sasuke rolled her dark eyes.

"Whatever. It's done and over with."

"That's what you said last time!" Sakura grinned suddenly, "I know-" He reached over and nudged Naruto, "Hey, 'To-chan, wanna prove that you and 'Ke-chan are good?"

"Good? Wha-" Naruto looked up from her latest seal and blinked in confusion, not sure what was going on. She'd always found it easy to loose herself in the art of sealing and this time was no different. In fact, it was even easier when this seal was so important.

"Tell 'Ra-kun that we're not fighting anymore," Sasuke demanded.

Naruto blinked again and then shrugged. "We're good. We're fine. We're awesome!"

Sakura smirked, "Prove it."

"How?" Naruto's question was cautious. Sakura was nearly as good at pranking as she was.

"Kiss." His smirk deepened and the girls gaped at him, more than a little surprised.

"'Ra-kun!" Sasuke exclaimed, scandalized, "We're not going to _kiss_!"

"Why not?" Sakura put his elbows on the table and rested his chin in his hands, leaning forward, "You've been friends for years. And girls kiss all the time." A smirk came over his lips and both women at the table made faces.

"Not how _you_ want us to kiss," Sasuke muttered, turning her face away with a tiny blush. Even over the age of thirty he was still disconcerted at the thought of public displays of affection. Of any kind.

"That's what you think," Sakura retorted, leaning back again and crossing his arms over his flat, if masculinely sexy, chest. "Where do you think that girls learn to French?"

Sasuke's eyes widened and she glanced at Naruto before looking back at the lanky man, "You mean-"

Naruto giggled, eyes sparkling, "Did you and Gorgeous-" He trailed off after referencing the old Ino with Sai's old nickname for her.

"Girls don't kiss and tell," Sakura singsonged back with a smirk on his lips.

Sasuke looked Sakura up and down, taking in _his_ shoulder length magenta hair, strong jaw, five o'clock shadow, and lack of breasts. "You aren't exactly a girl, now are you 'Ra-kun?"

Sakura blinked at that and then retorted elegantly, "Gentlemen don't, either." He settled back on the bench seat and gestured to his two teammates, "Now kiss and make up."

Naruto looked at Sasuke. Sasuke looked at Naruto.

"What the hell," Naruto shrugged and reached out, threading her fingers through Sasuke's hair and pulling the other girl close. Sasuke squeezed her eyes shut and waited. She'd do anything for her teammates and if Sakura wanted them to kiss and Naruto wasn't against it, then he'd suck it up and take it.

The kiss was dry, just a press of lips on lips, but it lasted longer than Sasuke thought it would. When she was released, Sasuke opened her eyes and let herself lean back properly into her chair. Absently she licked her lips, tasting Naruto's cherry lip gloss. When Naruto went all out, she went _all out_.

"Eee!" All three of the team looked to the door of the café and Naruto winced. He hadn't expected someone to be so enthusiastic about seeing that.

Kurenai Yuhi's hands were twisted up under her chin and her eyes were wide with glee as she bounced over to them, "Hi!" She rocked back on her heels, looking over the three seemingly mid-twenty year olds, "I don't know if you remember me, but I'm Kurenai."

Sasuke frowned coldly, "And?" she asked, not impressed by their team time being interrupted.

"Well," Kurenai sat herself down on the bench that Sakura was sitting on and grinned manically, "See, a few years ago I saw you two girls at a bar when I was with friends and, uh," she looked to Naruto for her name.

Naruto magnanimously gave a name to the woman, "Hitomi. This is Akemi," he gestured to Sasuke and then to Sakura, "And this is Akira." They'd thought about what names they'd use if asked. They'd gone through a lot of options before Sakura had reminded them that their fake Sexy names had to have their nickname's in each one to be believable.

"-and Hitomi-chan said something about taking you home, see," Kurenai gestured to Sasuke and the looked to Naruto and continued, "And you said that you lived together and Akemi-chan kissed your cheek."

Naruto thought back to when that had happened. She vaguely recalled seeing Kurenai when she and Sasuke had gone out drinking and Sasuke being sick at the bar. "Yeah, sure. I remember."

"Well, my friends and I, we've had several 'discussions' over whether you two were together or just roommates." Kurenai blushed, "I'm so sorry that we were discussing your personal lives and we don't even know you, but ninja are known for gossip mongering." She smiled brightly with her excuse and Naruto rolled her eyes.

"Okay," Naruto sighed, "And seeing us kiss right now, that tells you that we're together I suppose?"

Kurenai nodded, "Yeah, I mean, I was for you two being together but Genma just thought you were being drunk and friendly with each other," she blushed again, "Seems I was right though!"

Sakura smirked arrogantly, "What about me, Kurenai-san?" As soon as he spoke up, both Naruto and Sasuke knew that their medic was up to something. Sakura hadn't been there with them that time that Kurenai was talking about and they were curious as to what Kurenai's answer o that question would be.

Kurenai cocked her head slowly to the side, considering the man and then smiled coyly, "Fag hag?"

All three of the team burst out laughing, unable to keep their humour contained. Sakura wiped a few tears of mirth from his eyes and chuckled as he shook his head, "Not quite." Sasuke wondered for a moment what Sakura was doing and then the medic leaned over Kurenai, grabbed Sasuke's face and gave her a thorough French kiss before pulling away a little and pecking her on the lips with a gentle smile before sitting back down.

Kurenai stared and Naruto laughed, putting a suggestive hand on Sakura's broad wrist and lowering her voice to a husky, breathy tone, "What about me?"

Sakura grinned, leaned Naruto's way and kissed her too. Just as thoroughly.

Sasuke watched Kurenai watch his teammates kiss and inwardly snorted at the wide-eyed look of disbelief and giddy glee.

Naruto had way too much fun messing with people, really. None of them were together in that way, but they'd been a team for so many years that a little impromptu kissing between them wouldn't hurt their feelings or bonds with each other.

"So, uhm," Kurenai cleared her thought when Sakura and Naruto's kiss ended, "You're, uhm, _all_ together?" Her voice was a little squeaky at the end of her sentence as her finger made a little circle in the air and Naruto giggled.

"Yeah, we've been together for what seems like forever," She ran a hand through her blond hair and shook her head, letting her hair settle around her face, "And since we're sort of on a date, Kurenai-san," Naruto looked at the interloper pointedly as she trailed off and Kurenai blushed even harder.

"Oh. Oh! Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to- I'm sorry!" She stood quickly and sketched a bow to them, "I'm sorry, I'll leave." She was about to turn around and do exactly that when she paused and a hopeful look came over her face, "Can I tell Genma about you two being together? We, ah, sorta, maybe have a bet?"

Sasuke was about to deny her when Naruto spoke up first, "Actually, we'd rather not be bet on, Kurenai-san. We can accept gossiping, but we'd rather not have our lives bet on."

Sakura nodded seriously, "Please, Kurenai-san, I don't mind if you speak about our relationship, but betting on us is-" His voice lowered with his disapproval, "-disrespectful."

"You're right, I'm sorry Hitomi-san, Akira-san, Akemi-san. We shouldn't have done that." Kurenai swallowed and bit her lip, "I'll make sure that Genma knows the bet is cancelled. I wasn't thinking, I'm sorry."

Waving a lazy hand at the red eyed woman, Naruto perked back up, "No worries; I'm sure that some people don't mind. We're just not in that group."

"Of course," Kurenai bowed again. "Again, my apologies," She murmured her last words and left with barely a glance over her shoulder to the three of them and when Sasuke was sure that she was gone, turned to Sakura.

"-the hell was that?" She muttered, "You are needlessly complicating our covers' lives. Serious 'Ra-kun."

"It's fine," Sakura waved a hand at him, "That gives any of us, in any pairing, an excuse to be seen with each other. And want to have private, 'alone' time."

Thinking about it, Sasuke reluctantly nodded, "Yes, but... a threesome?" She gave him an incredulous stare, "Isn't that going a little far?"

"Not really," Naruto spoke up softly, "If we were seen together, we'd just be two girls. But if 'Ra-kun and you go to a dark corner of a bar and then the next night goes with me, there would be a lot more gossip and more than likely someone would butt their nose in and 'tattle' on 'Ra-kun dating two women and expect a blow up. This way we may seem a bit unconventional, but no one is cheating on anyone. Cheating gets far more gossip than a threesome minding their own business."

With a sigh, Sasuke capitulated to her Hokage's logic. It was strange and unusual logic, but still logic. And since Sakura was agreeing with her, Sasuke could trust that Naruto's points were right. Sakura used to be one of those girls who gossipped, naturally and without intent to harm. He supposed that if Sakura and Ino had heard of a threesome, they'd have talked about it, but then let it go. If they'd have heard about a cheating man with two girls, Ino most certainly would have taken it upon herself to find and inform the two girls what was going on.

The team certainly didn't need someone trying to track them down and find out who they actually were.

"Okay," Sasuke turned his attention back to what they were really here to talk about, "Back to the subject at hand." Sakura's face cleared of his humour and Naruto looked back down at the half complete seal before her. Sasuke continued as Naruto started drawing again, "'To-chan, how is the seal going?"

Naruto's concentration didn't waver, "Good. Great. Awesome." She paused and then shook her head, balling the test-drawn seal up and tossing it over her shoulder into the garbage bin, and admitted, "Could be better."

Sakura raised his eyebrows and rested her chin on hand hand, "And what about the plan of action?"

"Good," Naruto didn't look up from her new seal, "Got a plan. It's good."

"Please expand," Sasuke muttered, frowning.

Thick lines appeared on the paper as Naruto worked, "We kill him."

"Yes, that is an excellent plan. How are we going to do that?" Sasuke tried to coach Naruto into further expanding what she had so far on the plan. While Sasuke was an excellent strategist, Naruto was much better at tactics and since the plan was short term and supposed to be meant for a one time engagement, it fell under Naruto's purview and training, and not hers.

"Well," Naruto pouted at the seal drawing and huffed, crumpling it up like the last dozen she'd drawn, "Haven't got any further than that yet."

"Great," Sasuke folded her arms on the table and rested her head on her limbs, "So we have a plan with no details and a seal, or several, that haven't been created yet. Inari-sama, 'To-chan, we've only been talking about this for a year."

"Yeah well, we had a few issues this year," Naruto muttered back, tongue stuck out the side of her mouth as she carefully considered the new blank paper before putting her pen to it.

Sakura shrugged. "Can we put containment seals around Konoha? So he won't escape if we miss our first chance?"

Naruto snorted dryly. "Yeah, because we totally want him running around Konoha injured, furious, and trapped."

"Oh," Sakura bowed his head, "I didn't think of that." He paused, opened his mouth to speak again and paused again and shook his head, "I suppose it would be even worse if we trapped him in the Uchiha compound. Smaller area, but with the targets he wants anyway."

Sasuke paled sharply at the thought of Madara trapped in the Uchiha compound and angry. He'd take to just slaughtering anyone he came across. "Gods no," she moaned quietly.

A hand rested on her shoulder and she looked up to see Sakura's dark green eyes looking at her with compassion and understanding. "I shouldn't have even said that, I'm sorry 'Ke-chan."

They were all silent for a while, each lost in their own thoughts.

Naruto growled suddenly and scribbled her seal out. "I can't-" She tossed her pen on the table and put her face in her hands, smearing a little ink on her forehead from her fingers, "I'm trying to get too many things into this seal. They just won't all go."

"What are you combining?" Sasuke asked intently. She had more training with seals than Sakura did, though Naruto's knowledge far outstripped her.

"I'm trying to put together a Time Stabilizer, a Reality Force, a Chakra Drain, a Sensor, and a Seal Stabilizer into this. I just can't get all of them in there."

"What are each of those for?" Sakura asked, looking far more interested in Naruto's sealing then he'd ever been before.

"Well, the Time Stabilizer and Reality Force will negate his space/time techniques, making it impossible for him to go though time to dodge killing blows and also negating his ability to phase out of our reality." Both of Naruto's team mates nodded in understanding. Those two seals couldn't be messed with, they needed that advantage over Madara. "The Sensor is so that I can tailor the entire seal to him. The Chakra Drain will be linked up with the Sensor so that I can use his chakra to power the seal without having to use mine so I can fight too. The Seal Stabilizer is sort of required so that it doesn't blow up in my, _our_ faces."

"Wait," Sasuke frowned intently, "Do you need the Sensor in there? If we could drive him into the area of effect for the seal-"

"See, that's the problem, I don't want to have to drive him anywhere. It'd be like herding cats, only worse." Naruto rubbed the back of her neck, "And if I want to drain his chakra then yes, I do need the Sensor."

"Well," Sakura rubbed her eyebrow thoughtfully, "If this is a surprise attack that he isn't expecting, do we need to drain his chakra? If this goes down as fast as we think it's going to, you won't have time to use all your chakra anyway, right?"

"True," Naruto nodded, "But I need to be able to tailor the seal to him and that still requires the Sensor."

"What- what about a portable seal?" Sasuke murmured, thinking out loud, "Like one you could draw in blood ink and throw when it's attached to a kunai? How big of a radius could you put in a seal like that?"

"What, you mean throw a kunai at him and activate it when he's in range?" Naruto's face lit up and she scrabbled at her pile of papers for a clean piece, "I could-" She muttered and drew something and then hummed to herself and drew something else. Quietly she spoke under her breath, "If I use my chakra as the battery and a mobile seal tag like a flashbang, I could take out the Chakra Drain and the Sensor. All I'd really need is the Time and Reality. I could even drop the Seal Stabilizer because it's only two separate seals and they usually work well together..."

Sasuke sighed in relief. At least they had one of their problems out of the way now. With a seal in the making they could concentrate on how exactly they were going to catch Madara by surprise and kill him.

However they were going to do it though, Sasuke still wanted to be the one to give the bastard the kill shot. It was her duty to the Hokage to clean up the messes made by her clan.

*****xxXXxx*****

**Author's Note Part the Second:** 1000 reviews! OMG guys! Every single one of you is completely awesome!


	19. Burn Bright

**Title: **Burn Bright (Part One)

**Rating: **PG

**Summary: **There are secrets that Kakashi doesn't know and when it comes down to it, he doesn't need to know; as long as he trusts his team.

**Warnings:** None. Mental battle preparation.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does.

**Author Note:** And now that I am done both parts of the last chapter, I give you PART ONE! (I really didn't want to leave you guys with this ending cliffy because it's nasty if you don't know if you're going to get the next chapter sooner or if it'll take another several months before you can find out what happened XD) So, I have this piece and in three or four days I'll post the second piece! Promise. It's already written and looked over. Unless I die. Then you're all screwed.

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Kakashi slunk around outside the walls of the Uchiha compound. It was that day. The day that his students were afraid of. He didn't know why they were scared of this day, but they were.

His team was unusually well armed, Kakashi thought to himself as he watched them; Armed to the _teeth_. He hadn't expected them to take this day so seriously, even with how worried he knew Sakura had been all those months ago when he'd realized his team was waiting for something specific.

Now Sasuke and Naruto had pretty much entirely made up, it seemed that they had put everything into this. Whatever _this_ was. Kakashi was sure that had there still been problems between them, they would have put it to the side today.

They'd also split up. Sasuke was hanging around the Uchiha Day Care that the children who weren't in the Academy attended during the day. Naruto was making a point of following Sasuke's parents around and Sakura, surprisingly, was the one hovering around Itachi.

Had this been a protection detail or mission, Kakashi would have expected Sasuke to be torn between guarding his brother or parents and even as Kakashi thought that, he wondered if that's why the child had removed himself from his closest family members and took the emotionally easier position at the Day Care.

It wasn't like the Day Care was a hard target. Nor was Itachi for that matter. Kakashi watched Naruto pace the roof of the military police building and was sure that the most powerful of his team was watching over the 'hard target'.

Though if someone wanted to cause great emotional damage to the Uchiha and Konoha, the Day Care would be the most ideal place to do so. And Sasuke was fairly fanatical about protecting innocent children. No surprise with his history.

"Hatake-san," Itachi landed on a branch in the same tree that Kakashi was currently occupying, and Sakura followed most naturally, keeping one very keen eye on the thirteen year old and one eye on their surroundings.

Kakashi hadn't ever seen Sakura so vigilant inside the city walls before.

"Itachi-san. Sakura-chan." He greeted them amiably.

"Kakashi-taichou." That was a shock. Why would Sakura refer to him as her captain when he knew almost nothing of his team's self imposed mission?

"This is very strange," Itachi spoke again, "I have never been hovered over before." He looked to his watcher and then back to Kakashi, "This morning, Sasuke would not let Mother, Father, or myself out of his sight until Sakura-chan and Naruto-kun showed at the house to escort us."

"And how did Uchiha-san take that?" Kakashi let a little humour into his voice and could see the light grin on Sakura's face. Itachi raised an eyebrow at him and shot him a bland look.

"He did not take well to it." Itachi didn't have to say that his father was willing to put up with it though, for Sasuke's sake. It was rare that Sasuke asked for something for himself and when he did speak up, Kakashi had noticed that his requests were almost always catered to.

"Even though Naruto is months away from jounin?"

Kakashi wasn't the only one worried about how quickly his team was progressing but he was one of the only three adults in the village who looked upon Naruto's progress with pride. Naruto took after his parents very much. Sasuke had his entire family backing his abilities and the Yamanaka, Akimichi, and Nara trio of clans were all behind Sakura. Only Naruto had so few visible supporters. Those that supported him silently didn't count in Kakashi's mind. If they were going to support his sensei's son, they should support him openly.

It didn't seem to bother Naruto to know that he had so few in his corner, but then again he was almost inappropriately close to his teammates. Kakashi had never caught them doing anything inappropriate, thank god because they were only _eight_, but he figured that it was just a matter of time before his kids got hormones and their teamwork went to hell. Thankfully that wouldn't start until at least three years from now.

"Father cares not that Naruto-kun is almost the same rank. The fact that Sasuke believes his teammate to be capable in some manner that he is not indicates that Sasuke trusts Naruto over Father." Itachi drew his shoulders up just the slightest bit, "Father will not deny Sasuke something so trivial as someone watching over him for the day, however."

Kakashi wasn't surprised at all that Fugaku was so acquiescent to his son. He was still trying to show Sasuke that the child could trust in him even after his perceived miserable failure three years ago.

"And you have no indication as to why Sasuke would want to protect you and your family today." It wasn't a question, because Kakashi could see that Itachi was just as in the dark as he was about his team's reasoning.

"His nightmares haven't abetted even though he and Naruto-kun have reconciled."

Sakura looked up from where she was cleaning under her fingernails with a senbon, "His nightmares of not being worthy of serving are mostly gone," she said in a cautious tone, "The nightmares have changed though; now that he knows that Naruto will not leave him, he is afraid that his family will vanish."

"Aa," Kakashi suddenly understood. Sasuke and Naruto had finally mended their friendship and now there was only one other fear that could make Sasuke so afraid. His family disappearing.

"I see," Itachi murmured quietly at the same time Kakashi indicated his own understanding. He blinked several times as he thought rapidly and turned to fully face the eight year old girl who was acting as his protector, "He does not fear you leaving?" Kakashi thought that Itachi's question was appropriate as would be far more likely that Sasuke would go through his fear of loosing his friends first, and then his family, but as far as the jounin could recall, Sasuke had never, not _once_, questioned Sakura's commitment to the team and himself..

Sakura smiled sadly at both ninja, "I have proved my loyalty in many ways. Sasuke will never doubt me."

"Not even with your death?" Itachi countered and Sakura's smile warmed in a strange manner.

"My ijutsu isn't just for others," was her only comment before she went silent and didn't deign to look at them again.

Neither Kakashi nor Itachi was sure how to take that, but every scenario they could think of give them chills.

Kakashi turned back towards the Uchiha compound knowing that Sakura wouldn't tell them anything else. He had other things to worry about right now anyway. He went back studying the compound for a bit and then noticed something odd. Odder then his cute little team playing guardian.

There were ninja in the shadows. Black cloaked, white faced ninja. ANBU masks he would have recognized, but there were no faces on these masks he caught glimpses of. The fake ANBU weren't noticed by any of the Uchiha they were shadowing and that was strangest of all because about an eighth of the Uchiha had their sharingan activated at any given time in the compound for various reasons.

Itachi hissed beside him and Kakashi reached out, resting a hand on the boy's arm just above his elbow. He could feel Itachi's muscles clench and tighten, but the Uchiha Clan Heir didn't shake his hand off.

Itachi had noticed the shadows as well.

As they weren't doing anything untoward, and as Kakashi realized whilst watched carefully, Naruto knew the shadowed nin were there, he decided that perhaps this was another step in Sasuke's plan to protect his family. From what, he still didn't know, but it was clear that Sasuke took this threat very seriously.

"I should go," Itachi finally murmured, easing his arm from Kakashi's hold. The look in the thirteen year old's eyes told Kakashi that the boy was going to go get heavily armed and prepare for all out war. He was sure that it couldn't be comfortable knowing that your family was at risk and not knowing a thing about it.

"Be careful," Kakashi replied with a practised nonchalant wave goodbye. As soon as Itachi dropped out of the tree and started on his way back to his house, Sakura followed, quick and as quiet as a cat.

Taking his time, Kakashi worked his way around the edges of the compound, trying to count how many shadowed nin were watching the Uchiha clan. It proved difficult because there was very little to differentiate them from one another, but he knew there was at least ten, maybe as many as fifteen.

From what he could see, and something that both confused and infuriated him, was that at least half of the shadowed nin had statures that spoke of children, people under the after of fifteen. There _were not_ a dozen genius children in Konoha. Itachi was one, his team a set of three. Shikamaru Nara was yet another. But the nin he could barely see now? There were no names he could possibly put to them.

Still confused about the shadows, Kakashi let his attention turn to Sasuke at the Day Care. His eyebrow rose as he watched the eight year old walk across the top pole of the swing-set, eyes sharp but hands gentle as he carried a three year old on his hip. Sasuke was barely big enough to carry the child, but he wasn't having any trouble with the weight, which was understandable. Sasuke was shinobi; there was no way the weight of a three year old would hinder him.

The toddler clapped loudly, excitedly and giggled in Sasuke's arms when the eight year old reached the end of the pole and started walking down the side of the swing-set. The other small children all gathered around and jumped with excitement, each begging to be the next one to go up with Sasuke.

A mild mannered teacher stood under the pole that Sasuke had been walking on and Kakashi wondered why she was worried Sasuke would drop one of his relatives. There wasn't any way in hell that Sasuke would be so careless. Especially on this day where he'd gotten his entire team and a handful of other, _unknown_, nin to play guardian angel for the Uchihas.

Though it was only natural that the teacher didn't know of Sasuke's overprotectiveness.

And it still bothered Kakashi that _he_ didn't know why Sasuke was overprotective today.

But if it was as important as Sasuke thought it was, then he supposed that it was time to get in on the 'action' as well.

Roof hopping over to the Day Care, Kakashi made sure to be less noiseless than he would typically be and jumped down to the edge of the playground area and walked the rest of the way in. The children Sasuke's age sent a few glares in his direction, having been conditioned by their family to dislike him, but the younger ones all giggled and scrambled towards him, holding out their hands in pleas to be picked up and carried where ever he was going. Most shinobi clan children did that when they were around someone in the Konoha uniform. He obliged a cute little four year old girl and settled her on his hip as he continued towards Sasuke. The children followed him back to the swing-set, still giggling and laughing.

"Sasuke-kun." Kakashi smiled up at his chuunin student. His smile and tone may have seemed bright and happy, but Sasuke would be able to tell that it was careful and a little tense. The teacher glared at him only for a moment before reaching out and taking the girl from him and starting to gather the children to go inside for the morning lessons.

"Kakashi-taichou," Sasuke nodded to him and finished walking the newest child across the pole. He came down to the ground and set the child on his feet and waved to him as he toddled off towards the other children the teacher was calling to her.

"So, Sasuke-kun," Kakashi led the way back up the side of the building to the roof and crouched on the ledge, intently cataloguing everything his eye saw, "Is there anywhere in particular that you'd like me to be stationed?"

Sasuke frowned and looked at him out of the corner of his eyes, "What do you mean, Taichou?"

Kakashi cut a stern look to the boy, "You are prepared for both an assassination and outright war, Sasuke," He gestured to the Shadow Cutter hilt that was visible above Sasuke's shoulder's and the rest of the weapons that weren't all visible. "You think that something is going to happen today and I'd like to be able to be a part of this with you; I want to help you."

Sasuke's brow furrowed as he thought about Kakashi's words and Kakashi waited patiently. He'd proven that his kids could trust him and they knew they can trust him.

Today Kakashi would find out just how much Sasuke, the most suspicious of his kids, trusted him.

"How fast can you move with your Raikiri?" The boy finally asked, intent and studying the compound.

Kakashi shifted subtly. He'd shown his students his Raikiri a few times and was sure that Sasuke had come up with his own version of it - which was no surprise since the boy had the sharingan and was a genius. The fact that Sasuke was asking him for speed instead of duration was interesting.

"One hundred-fifty percent faster than my Body Flicker." The fastest he could move was indeed the fastest in Konoha, now that Minato was dead. But Kakashi wouldn't have been able to combine the Flying Thunder God technique and his Raikiri anyway.

Sasuke nodded and then pointed North, "The entrance to the North is the least protected. My information tells me that the threat will come from the North-East. If you see a man in a black cloak with red clouds on it, wearing an orange swirled mask with only one eye hole, Raikiri him before he sees you. Through the heart. And then again through the head. We'll have reached you by then if you can do that."

Kakashi nodded, still confused but less so than before. He now had a target and knew that the leader of the mission had information that he trusted. He had to remember that Naruto and Sakura trusted Sasuke enough to follow him on this weird mission, though he didn't know if it was as blindly as he was following.

But he wouldn't leave a teammate, or a whole damn team behind. Not again. He'd lost a team before and he wasn't going to lose another one. If Sasuke said that someone was coming for the Uchiha, he believed that someone was coming for the Uchiha.

"Do we know the main targets?" He thought that the main targets would be where the three chuunin had stationed themselves, but his estimates were corrected shortly.

"No. The information that I have gathered indicates the Uchiha clan as a whole is the target. I have placed myself here at the softest target and given my weaknesses over to Naruto and Sakura to defend."

"I understand." Kakashi frowned, "Do you have a time frame?" 'A time frame smaller than the entire day' was his real question, but he didn't voice it. It didn't need to be voiced because Sasuke knew what he was asking.

"I previous thought that late afternoon and into the evening would be the time frame, but things have changed and I cannot limit myself to what I believed before." Sasuke straightened his spine and started back to the edge of the building, intent on going back to the Day Care. He paused suddenly and looked over his shoulder to Kakashi, and the look on his face hinted at great fear and loss. "I will not fail in this, Kakashi-sensei, not this time."

Whatever it was that Sasuke was referring to, it wasn't his childhood assault. No, this was something larger and greater. Sasuke's words resonated with Kakashi's own determination to protect his family, even if his family wasn't connected by blood.

Kakashi reached out and pulled Sasuke into a tight hug, "I will not let you down, Sasuke." Sasuke's _thank you_ was muffled in Kakashi's vest. Kakashi held onto his student for a moment longer and then released him. "Burn brightly, and use your will of fire to defend those you love to the death."

His parting words were a bastardized version of the end of the Yondaime's speech as he'd sent his troops to battle. Kakashi felt that it was only proper that he leave Sasuke with words of war, because he could feel it in the air: There would be blood.

On his way to his assigned position, Naruto pulled him aside at the Military Police HQ.

"Sensei," Naruto murmured quietly, tugging his hand, "You can't take this lightly. If he comes, we have to get him."

"Who are you protecting?" Kakashi asked softly, "I've only ever seen you this intense when you're protecting someone you love."

"I'm protecting Sasuke. And Itachi. And every other Uchiha in Konoha. He wants to kill them all." Naruto's face furrowed with anger and determination, "I won't let him."

"He would kill them all?" Kakashi wasn't questioning that a man could kill children and babies, he was concerned about a man that his students thought able to kill over three hundred people and not get caught. His team was called Team _Tensai_ for a reason.

"It would take him less than two hours to subdue and kill every Uchiha from the eldest to the newborns. He would escape." Naruto stopped and shook his head, "He _will_ escape if we don't catch him first. Sensei," There was a lot of emotion in Naruto's eyes when he looked up at Kakashi. His words took on a hint of desperation and worry, "Please don't die. I don't want to lose you."

Kakashi ruffled Naruto's hair gently with an upside-down eye smile, "I'll do my best, Naruto-kun." He couldn't bring himself to lie or give his student false hope by promising not to die and so all he could so was do his best.

Waiting, Kakashi mused as he flipped a page of his nonexistent book, was probably the hardest part of an assassination mission. Looking nonchalant as he waited wasn't easy either, but he had practised so the genjutsu for his novel was perfect, right down the to the words on the pages. Except he could see through it because it wasn't really there and it was a good cover for moving his eye back and forth, back and forth, scanning for danger.

He was still so very worried and the flickering blackness of the strange shinobi, the ones that had the height of children and the professionalism of Mizu-nin were getting on his nerves. It didn't help that the Uchiha had figured out that something was wrong because the whole compound was getting more and more tense.

As with all waiting missions, Kakashi's stomach tried to growl at him and he quickly shoved a chunk of rations in his mouth. Small portions whenever the mood struck. It was easiest for him to fight without a full or empty belly. He'd never asked other's how best they fought because knowing when they fought the best was also knowing when they fought the worst. Information like that contained knowledge of something that could be exploited.

A flicker in the corner of Kakashi's eye caught his attention and for less than a tenth of a second, he studied the orange swirled mask with three eye holes, one at each eye and one in the centre of the forehead. That wasn't the mask that his team had described to him, but he wouldn't let that stop him.

One eye or three, that was an orange swirled mask topping a black cloak with red clouds upon it.

Kakashi had covered half the distance between himself and the man before his Raikiri had even formed in his hand. The chirping lightning echoed in Kakashi's ears as he raced toward the man. Time seemed to slow and for the first time in his life he understood what people meant when they said something previously inane like that.

But time slowing wasn't inane. His mind was just working a million times fast than his body. He could see and understand every single movement that the masked man made in the two and a half seconds it took him to reach the man.

There was resistance as his blazing fist hit the man's black cloak with red clouds, but only at first. As his hand and arm passed through the man like a ghost he understood just how dangerous he was. His students had been correct to fear him.

As Kakashi regained his balance in a spin and set his feet for another pass he was paused by a brilliant flash of yellow and then Naruto was there at his hip.

Hiraishin. Kakashi was almost stunned out of his mental battle set by the fact that Naruto had recreated Minato's signature, _impossible_, jutsu.

Naruto all but snarled the name, "Madara."

Madara's words slithered out like a snake, "Hello, Naruto-kun."

*****xxXXxx*****


	20. And Let the Will of Fire Consume You

**Title: **And Let the Will of Fire Consume You (Part Two)

**Rating: **PG-13

**Summary: **The confrontation does not go down how Kakashi thought it would.

**Warnings:** Nothing significant. Death. Slight language.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does.

**Author Note: **Just a quick reference, I haven't read much past when Naruto starts making Chakra-hands, so this is obviously AU and as for canon mistakes, just go with them :D And now the conclusion of the fight **and** the fic! See? And I didn't even make you wait three days for it, much less... oh Jesus. 6 and a half months for Part Two. Sorry 'bout that. I knew it'd been a while, but not that long. I just couldn't get anything to paper and RL is distracting. Obviously. Anyway. Yeah. Here you go!

*****xxXXxx****

"I see you haven't changed in the last three years, Naruto-kun," The masked man, Madara, sounded amused and Kakashi scowled heavily. Where did this man get off, saying he'd known Naruto for years?

But he could see from Naruto's expression that he did know this man. Kakashi was sure that Sasuke and Sakura also knew him, as the three of them shared everything together. Anger coursed through Kakashi's veins as he watched the confrontation. He didn't like being in the dark about things that had to do with his students and he was as far in the dark as anyone could be. He knew nothing about this man and his relationship with his students.

"Actually," Naruto smirked, holding up a kunai, "I have."

There was a flash as the sun glinted over the blade and Kakashi could have sworn that he'd seen markings etched into it before the kunai few through the air and embedded in the ground a foot behind Madara.

A cruel sounding laugh came from the masked man and he shook his head, "Still having problems with aim, Naruto-kun?" The kunai had passed through the man's knee like he was still a spectre.

With an air of finality, Naruto blinked and raised a hand in an unfamiliar position, a smirk twisting at his lips. "Fuuinjutsu!"

Kakashi couldn't see Madara's face due to his mask, but he could sense the man's forced calmness.

"And just what was that supposed to do, Naruto-kun? You aren't the Sealing Master that your father was."

"No," Naruto nodded sagely, "No, I'm not." Kakashi blinked in shock as he felt a surge of chakra, greater than anything he'd ever felt before. It was definitely different as well. Kakashi was sure that he'd felt that kind of chakra before though, but he couldn't remember where, or when.

"We are to fight then?" Madara's voice held a mocking tone to it, but he still shifted into a battle stance, "As we have done before?"

"I think it'll be a little different this time," Naruto responded. Kakashi took up a position behind Naruto, kunai in one hand and the other raising to his hitai-ite to uncover his sharingan eye. Naruto's hand on his knee stopped him. "Don't look at him with your sharingan, Kakashi-sensei," Naruto commanded. Naruto hadn't even looked at him to see that he was preparing to bear the eye, but that didn't bother Kakashi. It was only natural to bring out your strongest weapons in a fight you know would be difficult.

"Aw," Madara cocked his head to the side, but other than that, didn't move, "You aren't going to let your Sensei fight with you, Naruto-kun? That's not very sporting. For you."

"I don't need Kakashi's help for this one, Madara," Naruto whispered. The feeling of that strange chakra was rising again and something shifted in the boy. Though Kakashi could only see the back of Naruto, he knew that his student had changed in some manner. "Wind: Rasenshuriken."

The very name of the attack made Kakashi pause momentarily as he considered the implications of the it. _Rasen_shuriken. Had Naruto's attack been fashioned after his father's famed Rasengan? Was this attack as destructive as Minato's Rasengan?

A four point shuriken of chakra appeared in Naruto's hand and Madara - who was so powerful that his brilliant students were scared of him - took a step backwards

"Trying that old trick again, Naruto-kun?" Madara tried to scoff it off, but Kakashi could see that the man was apprehensive of this new technique. Kakashi had no clear idea what it did, but from the name, style, and shape of the jutsu, it looked like it would do some serious cutting damage; as it's predecessor, the Rasengan, did.

"I've improved it," Naruto boasted, before he pulled his arm back and threw the whirling chakra at the figure that was facing them.

Madara tried to dodge it but immediately bounced off an invisible barrier. "Wha-" Madara's head whipped around just as the shuriken shaped technique hit him in the chest and there was an explosion at the site of impact that engulfed the man in smoke and fire.

Kakashi's fingers twisted together, calling up an earthen wall between them to protect Naruto from the flying debris. His ears rang with the force of the sound and looked to Naruto. "Naruto- what was that?"

"No time, Sensei." Naruto gasped for breath and finally Kakashi caught a glimpse of his face. His eyes were yellow and his pupils were horizontal slits. The top of his eyelids were orange and suddenly Kakashi connected the chakra that he could feel from Naruto with the name. He had seen Jiraiya use this kind of chakra.

"Sage?" His voice was just a whisper that trailed off as Naruto ran up the wall he'd created.

"How'd'ya like them apples!" Naruto yelled from the top of the wall and Kakashi goggled at his student. What was Naruto doing, egging on someone that powerful? There had been so much sharp chakra in that attack that even if a person was able to survive it, they had to be one of the most powerful people in the entire Elemental Nations! Wind chakra alone was sharp enough to cut through most defencive techniques; wind chakra powered by a Sage had to be even more deadly.

Quickly following Naruto up to the top of the wall, Kakashi crouched beside his favourite blond and looked down at the six foot radius damage that had cracked the earth open when the Rasenshuriken hit Madara and the ground.

"You-" Some of the smoke cleared out from the impact point and Kakashi was stunned to see Madara still standing there, a burn mark on his chest from both Naruto's attack and Kakashi's Raikiri and debris in his black hair. "What have you done?" Fury emanated from the man and Naruto smirked in a disturbing way.

"You've never been caught before, have you?" Naruto taunted the man. Waves of killing intent burst from Madara and Kakashi managed to weather the storm. He wasn't quite sure how Naruto was doing under the massive pressure, but if he'd met the man in battle before, he had probably built up an immunity to his KI.

"Boy!" Madara growled and thrust a hand forward, obviously intending to charge for Kakashi and Naruto, only to be caught again by the barrier that no one could see. "What. Have. You. _Done_?"

"I've done the impossible before, Madara. You know me, I'll just keep doing that."

A flash of pink from the corner of Kakashi's eye made the man glance in that direction, only to see Sakura holding Itachi immobile, Itachi's arms bent behind his back. Sakura whispered something to him, something that calmed him slightly, but seemingly not enough that Sakura was willing to risk letting the boy go.

Kakashi took a moment to wonder where everyone else was; no other shinobi had come racing at the sounds and feel of battle in the air and that was about as strange as it got in Konoha.

But then he remembered the black cloaked, grey faced strangers that had been hovering around the Uchiha compound and wondered if that was what Sasuke and the team had used them for: Uchiha crowd control. If Madara was after every Uchiha in Konoha, it wasn't a surprise that Sasuke wouldn't let any of the intended targets come close to this battle.

"Madara," Sasuke's vehement hiss of anger was barely audible, but all five people in the battle area heard him and turned to look.

Kakashi had never before seen such hate and animosity on that little face, not ever. It almost scared him to think that his cute little students could feel emotions like that.

"Sasuke-kun," Madara crooned and rested a hand against the barrier. "I see that you've come to join us. Tell me," Madara shifted subtly and Kakashi felt a upwell of revulsion for Madara in himself. He looked as though he was trying to seduce Sasuke with his words and Kakashi didn't like that. Didn't like that _at all_. "Are you here for your precious Naruto, or are you here-" He paused again and Kakashi got the sense that the man was grinning under his mask, "-_for me_?"

Itachi visibly flinched away, his eyes wide at the suggestion that his little brother was in league with this strange, crazy, murderous man. He wasn't the only one, Kakashi's eyes widened as well. The two other people on the battleground were as steady as rocks though, with observable complete trust in their teammate.

"I'm here for you," Sasuke's words were like a battering ram to Kakashi and the silver haired shinobi gaped for a moment, before he heard Sasuke continue. "I'm here for you, to kill you, Madara."

"And you think that just because the Uchiha have become close with the rest of Konoha-" Madara spat the name of the village out and Kakashi's hackles rose at that. No one insulted his village, especially not bastards like this man, "-that someone won't be ordered to do what was done before?"

"Here's a little something you don't know, you dick," Sakura spoke up, making everyone look at her. "The man that ordered that?" She smirked like a shark. "We own him. And he wouldn't dare go behind the Hokage's back ever again."

With confusion, Kakashi wondered what his students were talking about. Nothing bad had happened to the Uchiha clan and there hadn't been a shift in the village politics to make Sarutobi stronger in any way. If Sarutobi wasn't the Hokage they were talking about, who was?

"I don't need him to do it," Madara scoffed, but Kakashi could hear the tremor in his voice, see the whiteness of the fingers that were pressed against that barrier around him. "This won't hold me for long." Madara turned back to Sasuke and tapped the barrier with his index finger. "What do you think you can do to me when it goes down? I've already drained your little leader of half his chakra. How much time do you have left?"

Sasuke didn't look at Naruto, but Sakura glanced back and Kakashi whipped his head to the right to look at his blond student. Naruto's face was pale and he was sweating, but he was still standing and paying attention. Kakashi frowned when he realized that it was indeed Naruto that was powering the barrier. But what kind of barrier could possibly drain that much chakra in that little of time? Naruto had a chakra store that was nigh on ridicules for an adult, never mind a child his age.

"What makes you think the barrier is two-way?" Sasuke asked with a lilting tone as Sakura dropped Itachi's arms and lunged for the barrier. She flew through it with no trouble and clamped her arms around the man claiming to be Madara, pinning his limbs to his torso. Her legs twinged around his, making it impossible for him to escape. Kakashi knew how strong his girl was, and wouldn't be surprised to find that the man would have several broken bones when someone got around to examining the body after his team killed him.

At the same time that Sakura lunged for the man in the barrier, Sasuke also did so, drawing his Shadow Cutter one swift movement and aiming precisely. He reached the man milliseconds after Sakura, and the sword flashed as Sasuke swung, still flying through the air.

Sasuke blinked rapidly from where he had landed in a crouched position on the ground, Shadow Cutter in hand, blood dripping from the blade. Kakashi stared at the scene and managed to stumble to Sakura, prying her off the man's torso, whispering to her that it was okay, that the man was dead, she could let go. He had not predicted this as the outcome of the confrontation. He didn't know what he had been expecting, but this had not been it.

"Check it," Sasuke's voice was hoarse and barely audible over Kakashi's reassurances to Sakura.

"Check it?" Kakashi repeated, looking at his Uchiha student, "Check what?"

"The head-" Sasuke still hadn't moved out of his position, "Check the head! Tell me who it really is!" Kakashi could hear rising hysteria in the boy's high pitched voice, and so he let go of the girl on his team and as he made his way gingerly to the still masked head that had rolled a bit away he neatly sidestepped most of the bloody patches on the ground.

Naruto and Sakura watched him so intently he thought for a moment that they would light him on fire with their gazes alone. Sasuke still hadn't moved, though Sakura had started to move over to the crouching figure, looking like she was waiting to catch Sasuke when he let himself relax once again. Sasuke's muscles had to have been killing him, stuck in the position he was in.

Moving slowly, Kakashi toed the masked head and rolled it face up.

"Check the face!" Sasuke all but screeched at him and Kakashi bent down, laying a finger on the mask. "Please-" Sasuke moaned softly, "Check it, tell me-"

The mask moved away from the man's face without trouble and Kakashi found himself staring into wide black eyes on a face that looked startlingly like Sasuke and Itachi's.

Madara looked like a Uchiha.

"Sensei?" Naruto's tiny voice reached Kakashi's ears and the leader of Team Tensai shook his head.

"I don't know what you want me to confirm. It looks like an Uchiha." If this was an Uchiha, what did that mean? Why would an Uchiha turn against other Uchiha? Why would Sasuke be so desperate to kill a member of his family? What had this Uchiha been planning? What had his team prevented? And what the hell had they been talking about before Sasuke and Sakura had launched their combined attack?

"Naruto?" Sasuke whined in the back of his throat like a wounded puppy, "Is it- Is he really-? Was it him?"

Naruto scrambled quickly to Kakashi's side, collapsing to his knees with exhaustion as the strange markings on his face vanished as though never there in the first place. He stared down at the face that had been hidden under the mask and there was a low hiss from the boy that turned into two words: "Mission complete." Kakashi was both shocked and entirely unsurprised to see tears in Naruto's eyes.

Sakura caught Sasuke as the other boy collapsed, sobbing. His sword hit the ground with a faint noise as it bounced against the hard earth. Sakura cuddled his face to her neck even as she stared at nothing, pupils blown and face as pale as Kakashi had ever seen it.

A hand touched Kakashi's elbow and he looked away from his crying children to see Itachi, pale faced and shocked, standing between him and the thirteen year old's parents. Kakashi could read the expressions on Fugaku and Mikoto's faces and it was obvious that they were just as scared and confused as he was. He didn't know where they had come from or how they'd gotten past the unknown ANBU forces that had been keeping everyone away, but he was glad they were here now, even though they were seeing something that no parent should ever have to see.

They were seeing Sasuke in his friend's arms after killing a man, sobbing. They'd apparently never seen Sasuke cry so hard before. Perhaps not even the summer before the children had joined the Academy.

"Sasuke-kun?" Mikoto's soft questioning voice carried over the mostly silent area and Sasuke sniffled as he raised his head from Sakura's neck and looked to his mother. "Sasuke-kun, what- who is that?"

"A murderer," Sasuke's voice was scratchy and he pushed away from Sakura, stumbling over to his mother. Mikoto took him into her arms and held him tight as Fugaku gathered his wife and Itachi together into a family group hug. "He was going to kill you- kill everyone."

No one asked the question that was on Kakashi's mind. 'Why?'.

But now was not the time. Now was time for Sasuke and his family.

Naruto wavered and Kakashi was there, holding the boy gently in his arms. Sakura hopped over, her hands already glowing green. Naruto waved her off, though clung to Kakashi's vest with one hand, "No, it's just chakra exhaustion, Sakura-chan."

"What is going on here?" The stern voice of Hiruzen Sarutobi cut through everything; the crying, the talking, the crumbling of the earth wall, and the still hissing fire at the base of the Rasenshuriken strike in the ground.

"Jii-san," Naruto wheezed and Kakashi stood up, carrying Naruto with ease. "Good to see yah."

"Naruto-kun. Sakura-chan." Kakashi felt the girl stand up beside him and shuffled closer to her. He wasn't going to leave any of his kids to weather this storm alone. He hadn't let them go through this alone, he wasn't going to abandon them in the aftermath. "Sasuke-kun."

"Hokage-sama," Kakashi murmured, drawing Sarutobi's attention to himself, "I am the leader of this team."

"And you take responsibility?" Sarutobi asked, raising an eyebrow, "For a murder of a Uchiha in the Uchiha compound?"

"No!" Sasuke pulled himself from his family's arms, "No, Kakashi-sensei is not responsible. I held the blade."

"I- I planned it," Naruto's voice wavered as he spoke.

"I restrained him!" Sakura grabbed Sasuke's hand, as well as Naruto's.

Sarutobi took all four of them in quietly; at the decapitated body on the ground, the bloody little girl, the shell-shocked Uchiha and exhausted Container. Then he turned to Fugaku.

"Uchiha-san, as the head of the Military and Civilian Police Force, what is your opinion of this debacle?"

Fugaku stepped forward and gave a deeper bow to the Hokage than he'd probably ever done before in his life, "I must investigate to be certain, Hokage-sama."

Sarutobi once again looked around at the damage and the people involved. As much as Kakashi knew that his team was a favourite of the old man's, that didn't mean that they would get away with this. As Sarutobi had said, it had been murder. Assassination. With no orders, or mission.

"Scr'll-" Naruto poked Kakashi lightly and he looked down to the child in his arms, "I'va scroll-" He gestured to his pockets and Sakura brightened considerably at that, turning to face then, and pulling Sasuke into stumbling around her body in a half circle, and digging though Naruto's pockets.

"Aha!" She pulled a scroll out that look positively ancient and carefully unrolled it. She perused it quickly and then approached the Hokage after gracing the man with a bow. "This is a mission scroll for the termination of the life of one Uchiha Madara. Betrayer and traitor of Konoha and his clan." She passed it to Sarutobi, who took it with a look of disbelief on his face. "It's signed with the blood seals of the Shodai, Nidaime, Yondaime, and yourself, Hokage-sama."

Sarutobi looked to the bottom of the scroll and from his expression, did indeed see the signatures that Sakura had pointed out. Kakashi didn't let his shock about four Hokage's signatures on a mission scroll show. Everyone within hearing range was as professional as himself as well, and though they didn't discuss it or seemed amazed by this apparent mission, he was sure there would be a lot of very furious discussions about it once everyone was away from the battlefield.

Kakashi wondered absently how it was possible that the Hokage had forgotten an execution mission he'd signed with every other Hokage that had ruled Konoha. And he then wondered how Naruto had gotten hold of the mission scroll. He might have to have the talk about not stealing from comrades with Naruto again.

"This is indeed a valid Unranked mission," Sarutobi murmured as he read it. "-if the body can be confirmed as Uchiha Madara."

Sasuke scowled. "We have a family registry you may use, Hokage-sama, for a visual confirmation."

A white eyebrow rose again and Sarutobi looked from Sasuke to Fugaku, "With, of course, the approval of the Head of the Clan." He didn't look like he expected to get that, but Kakashi knew Fugaku better than Sarutobi did now. Fugaku would do anything for his youngest son. Anything at all.

"If you wish access to our Family Registry," Fugaku barely even winced, "You need only to ask, Hokage-sama, and it will be provided to you."

"I see." Sarutobi rolled the ancient scroll up and turned back to Sasuke and the rest of Kakashi's team. "I will take the body and verify the completion of the mission, Team Kakashi. If this murder was indeed an execution that was assigned as an ongoing mission, pay will be proved and you will be allowed back onto duty." His voice hardened and his eyes were like steel, "You are dismissed from your duties until such a time as I recall you." There was silence for a moment as Team Kakashi digested the announcement.

A white masked ANBU swooped down and gathered the head and body of the dead man on the ground and took off. Sarutobi looked around the gathered people in front of him, nodded, and vanished.

Sasuke was immediately dragged back into a hug by his mother and Kakashi shook Naruto once, gently. "Why didn't you show me the mission scroll, Naruto-kun?"

"Uhm," Naruto murmured contentedly, dozing off due to his exhaustion. Sakura grinned up at him with a happy relief of the recently cleared convicted.

"I think he stole it, actually, Kakashi-sensei," She told him brightly. "I mean, Unranked missions don't generally get picked up by chuunin teams, do they?"

"And why would you guys steal that mission?"

"Because it was a Uchiha," Sasuke spoke, dragging his parents closer to Kakashi as they wouldn't let him go. "We made the mess, we cleaned it up. If I had a little help, no one is going to begrudge me. Besides, I had reliable information that he was planning on massacring the rest of the Clan."

Fugaku frowned. "When would you have gotten that kind of information, Sasuke-kun?"

"A couple of months ago on that mission where we ran into Momochi and his group." Sakura interjected. "Naruto and Sasuke had a big fight at the same time and Naruto wanted to prove that Sasuke wasn't as bad as he thought he was and so he stole that mission from the Missions office and we came up with a plan."

Kakashi looked at his team with a bit of disapproval in his eye. "If you had shown me the mission scroll, I would have been a much greater help."

"No one got hurt, Sensei," Sakura pointed out, "And Naruto just got a little tired." She looked pleased with herself, "I think we did quite good, altogether."

"Other than scaring me stupid!" A frazzled looking Iruka stormed across the torn up ground, only glancing at the damage that had occurred, mostly from Naruto's Sage technique, "I felt Naruto's chakra twist and I freaked out! What happened here?"

"That, Iruka-san, is a long story," Kakashi nudged Sasuke closer to his parents with his hip and passed Naruto off to Iruka, picking the blood soaked Sakura up and putting her on his shoulders. "I'll explain at your place after you put Naruto to bed and we get Sakura in some clean clothes."

*****xx*The End*xx*****

Thank you to everyone that stuck through to the very end! I know that there was long periods were this seemed dead, but I treasured each and every review that I got from all of you. Again, thank you.


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